Freeport-McMoRan Inc. 3Q 2026 Conference Call - FREEPORT-MCMORAN INC

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Report McMoran third 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 1 on your touchtone phone. If you require assistance during the conference, please press star 0. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. David Joint, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you, Regina, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Freeport Conference Call. Earlier this morning, FCX reported its third quarter operating and financial results. A copy of today's press release with supplemental schedules and slides are available on our website, fcx.com. Today's conference call is being broadcast live on the internet. Anyone may listen to the conference call by accessing our website homepage and clicking on the webcast link. In addition to analysts and investors, the financial press has been invited to listen to today's call. A replay of the webcast will be available on our website later today. Before we begin our comments, we would like to remind everyone that today's press release and certain of our comments on the call include non-GAAP measures and forward-looking statements, and actual results may differ materially. Please refer to the cautionary language included in our press release and slides into the risk factors described in our SEC filings, all of which are available on our website. Also on the call with me today are Richard Acterson, Chairman of the Board, Kathleen Quirk, President and Chief Executive Officer, Marie Robertson, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and other members of our management team. Richard will make some opening remarks kathleen and marie will review our slide materials and then we'll open up the call for questions richard thanks david we appreciate you all for joining us today we've been looking forward to speaking with you about our strong third quarter results and our positive outlook for the future we are pleased and proud of our team with a steady progress throughout the year achieved on the grassberg ramp up and with our initiatives across our business to drive value as we look forward the table is set for growing our volumes in the near term medium term and longer term supported by our portfolio of long-lived assets and by qualified and experienced team leaders in indonesia have expressed support for the extension of our operating rights beyond 2041 we continue to work with the ministry of energy and mines on document documentation to them to implement the memorandum of understanding we signed with the government of indonesia freeport's growth plans match up exceptionally well with accelerating requirements for copper electrification continues to advance at a rapid pace bigger and faster than we've seen in the past and copper is the metal of electrification. The world requires a lot more copper and supplies are challenged. Freeport is particularly well positioned to grow with the market. After working in this industry for decades, today's opportunity where structural trends point to multi-year period of significant demand growth is unique. We at FreepORT have the right assets, the right time, with a strong team in the Freeport family, and our strong financial positions, we are well positioned to capture this opportunity for the benefit of our shareholders and all our stakeholders. Kathleen? Great. Thank you, Richard, and thank all of you for participating on today's call, where we review our third quarter performance and update you on our initiatives, projects, and future outlook. Today, we will be discussing our team's work across our global business to build value, our solid progress and momentum to safely and sustainably restore large-scale production at Grassberg, drive operational excellence and new technology initiatives in the Americas, and advance plans for value-enhancing organic growth. Then on slide three, we show the highlights of our third quarter performance. Copper sales have increased in each of the last three quarters and we expect fourth quarter sales to be the strongest of the year by far. Steady progress continues at Grassburg with 67% ramp up achieved and confidence is building toward full scale. operational execution combined with the favorable metal price backdrop provided significant margins, cash flows, and earnings. The diversity of our portfolio and pricing leverage for our U.S. business comes through in the results. Operating income for our US mining operations more than doubled in the third quarter compared with last year's third quarter with strong conversion to the bottom line. This contributed to an increase of over 80 percent in our consolidated net income compared with the year ago quarter. The progress achieved during 2026 sets us up for growing volumes and improving financial performance as we look ahead to 2027 and 2028. Additionally, we are advancing our future growth plans with a series of projects in progress. We return nearly $1 billion to shareholders year-to-date, including $300 million in share purchases. Our financial position remains strong, and as we look ahead, growing volumes combined with a positive market environment for our products sets us up for significant increase in cash flows to support a value-enhancing investment program and increasing returns to shareholders. Moving to the copper markets on slide four, as a leading global supplier of refined copper, Freeport has strategic significance and is strongly positioned to benefit from copper's essential and increasingly important role in societies around the world. Copper's superior conductivity makes it the metal of electrification, and the global economy is rapidly becoming more electrified. Globally, copper demand is expected to rise in a number of applications, including the massive requirements for the power grid to support new technologies. LME copper prices averaged $6.09 per pound year-to-date through September and currently approximate $6 and 58 cents per pound on the LME, an increase of 16% since the start of the year. Our U.S. customers report robust copper demand associated with growing requirements for electricity and energy infrastructure, data center builds, and in the transportation sector. Copper continues to be strategically significant to China as the world's largest consumer to support its domestic power grid, technology advancement, and manufacturing of autos and consumer goods for growing exports the sizable movement of product to US warehouses continues resulting in tight market conditions in the major consuming regions outside of the US the situation underscores the strategic role of copper in the global economy and supply chains to support future growth the signals we see are clearly pointing to requirements for additional copper supplies to meet growing demand and at Freeport we have a valuable geographically diverse portfolio of integrated copper assets with large scale production facilities that are difficult to replicate long life reserves and resources and a portfolio of low-risk brownfield expansion opportunities to serve a growing market I'm going to move to the operating highlights on slide five where we summarize the highlights by geographic region. Starting with the US, we continue to focus on operating disciplines to improve efficiencies and productivity to grow production despite low ore grades. We were successful in improving our mining rates compared with the year ago quarter. However, an abnormally high frequency of extreme weather events in third quarter, which have continued in the fourth quarter, disrupted some of the momentum achieved earlier in the year. We are deploying new technology tools to enhance our operating models and are investing in more efficient trucks and mining equipment to support our objective of increasing U.S. production and reducing costs. We continue to pursue an exceptional opportunity to unlock meaningful value through application new technologies for recovering copper in our leaching processes data from our work today is supportive of a potential breakthrough and we are looking forward to what we'll learn as we go through 2027 as high potential next generation proprietary additives are deployed in the field in south america our flagship cerebrity operation in peru continues to demonstrate solid operating performance and productivity consistent with a large-scale world-class operation at elaborate in Chile or grades and operating rates were impacted during the quarter by mine sequencing to address slope management we're now commissioning new facilities that elaborate that will allow us to enhance metal production by increasing temperatures in our leach pads. We continue to work with the Chilean government to advance our environmental impact study to position El Abro for a major transformative expansion. In Indonesia, we are pleased to report that the team continues to achieve meaningful progress on the ramp up at the Grasberg rock cave. We operated at 67 percent of mine capacity during the third quarter and progress is advancing for meaningful growth as we go into 2027 upgrades to the material handling system for our automated rail system are progressing on schedule and we continue to advance work for a restart of production block one south in 2027. we continue to target overall rates reaching 80 percent by mid-27 and approach full capacity by the end of next year. We were successful in restarting the smelter and now have both smelters in Indonesia in operation to support our mine ramp up. The team is executing the phased ramp up safely and efficiently, and we continue to de-risk the plans and increase confidence in a long-term outlook. In Indonesia, we continue experience abnormally dry weather conditions and are closely monitoring forecast which predict conditions to return to more normal levels as we move into 2027. The dry conditions are generally favorable for mining but low water availability presents challenges in increasing mill rates. We're actively managing the situation with limited impacts to date. As Richard mentioned, we're continuing to work cooperatively with the the Indonesian government to secure our long-term operating extension in accordance with the MOU reached earlier in the year. We submitted our application in June, and we're continuing to work to complete the formal process. The government continues to express support for extension to provide long-time continuity of large-scale operations and mutual benefits. picture of the third quarter the team executed well but experienced challenging operating conditions you'll note we continue to expect the fourth quarter will be the strongest of the year but have adjusted our 2026 copper sales by approximately two percent to incorporate the impact of shortfalls in the u.s and in chile our team is committed to execution dedicated to overcoming challenges, and driven for excellence in all that we do. I'm going to move to slide six, where we have some real excitement around Freeport about the growth catalyst. We're driven to increase copper supply to a growing market, and are strongly positioned as we look forward with significant near-term, medium-term and long-term growth. The progress we've made throughout 2026 positions us for significant growth in volumes, margins, and cash flows in 2027 and 2028, as Marie will cover shortly. In the short term, we're positioned to grow from 3 billion pounds this year to 3.7 billion pounds in 2026 and over 4 billion pounds in 2020. strong execution of the grass-fed recovery is the major driver, with improved U.S. production adding incrementally. This growth notably does not require new capital. With our U. S. growth initiative as America's copper champion, we see a path for Freeport to be a 4.5 to 5 billion pound a year copper producer in the 2030 time frame, with success in our innovative leach initiative and our expansion of our Baghdad mine in Arizona. We continue to see the innovative leech initiative as one of the most attractive opportunities in our company because it leverages our existing infrastructure, is scalable, is not capital intensive and has low incremental operating costs. We've been on this journey and advancing this initiative for the last three to four years and our excitement continues to build, supported by progress in developing a proprietary next-generation additive that would unlock recoveries of low-grade ores previously thought to be unrecoverable. As you'll see in the chart, lab testing of the new Freeport additive is showing incremental recoveries of more than four times those achieved with our initial additive. The next generation additive is now being manufactured on a fast-track schedule and will start receiving commercial quantities for field deployment as we go into 2027. While we need to be cautious until it's proven in the field, this could represent the major breakthrough technology that we've been working to achieve. We expect to make an investment decision on the Baghdad expansion in the fourth quarter We're very excited about this. We see it as an attractive opportunity to transform Baghdad into the second largest copper mine in the U.S., benefiting from economies of scale and the use of modern technology to set the operation up for improved multi-decade performance. We're also advancing further growth options, which could be developed by the mid-2030s, the large-scale expansion of the Galabra Mine in Chile, and exciting possibilities for development of our large resource position in the Safford Lone Star District in Arizona. We see our pipeline of organic growth being particularly attractive in the context of an industry where greenfield projects carry significant risk and development timeframes can span 15 to 20 years. We have a differentiated, advantageous position since our projects are brownfield in nature resulting in benefits from leveraging existing infrastructure, lower capital intensity, experienced workforces and relationships with key stakeholders to move more quickly with less risk than a greenfield project. We're increasingly mindful of escalating inflationary pressures affecting capital costs for major projects and the need to be disciplined on qualifying projects, delivering investment returns, and carefully controlling budgets and schedules. We're going to continue to be focused, selective, and deliberate as we go forward and on balancing investments and growth with shareholder returns. At Freeport, we benefit from an experienced and highly respected project development team with proven experience in successfully managing major projects around the world. Putting this all together, the setup for Freeport is exceptionally strong, and Team FreepORT is intensely focused on execution and delivery to capture the value and the special opportunities that lie ahead. Now I'm going to turn the call to Marie, who will review our outlook, and then we'll take your questions. Thanks, Kathleen. Just flipping to slide seven, we show our three-year outlook for sales volumes of copper, gold, and molybdenum. As Kathleen referenced, we expect significant production and sales growth in the coming years. We have trimmed our 2026 copper sales by about 2% taking into account slightly lower production in the US and Chile, and by approximately 2.5% in 2027 to reflect current mine plan updates. Copper sales in 2028 are consistent with previous estimates, and gold and moly sales are unchanged for the three-year period. We expect our fourth quarter of 2026 sales volumes to be the highest of the year, with copper sales increasing 17% and gold sales nearly tripling from third quarter levels. For the year 2027, we expect annual growth in copper sales of over 20% compared with 2026 and more than a 50% increase in gold volumes, with additional growth in 2028 of 10% for copper and 20% for gold. Our team remains focused on delivering our plans safely and efficiently, which will translate is a strong financial performance and meaningful future cash flow growth. Moving to slide eight, we continue to carefully manage all costs and capital whilst driving efficiency and productivity programs, particularly in light of inflationary pressures affecting our business and the industry. As discussed on prior calls, we can continue to experience cost pressures and volatility in global energy and commodity markets including oil, sulfur and acid, largely associated with the conflict in the Middle East. Rising energy costs during 2026, particularly diesel prices, have impacted costs by approximately 500 million dollars compared with 2025. Sulfuric acid, a key input into various copper processing technologies across the industry, has more than doubled this year notably freeport is comparatively well positioned given our integrated business model and is generally insulated from price minutes as a significant producer of sulfuric acid through our smelting operations and consumer of asset in our leaching processes in addition to operating costs capital costs across the mining industry have been trending at a greater pace than overall headline inflation rates in recent years these pressures affect both sustaining capital and expansion project costs reinforcing the importance of remaining highly focused on carefully assessing our priorities pursuing continuous optimization programs and maintaining rigorous and strict project and cost controls on net unit cash costs we are maintaining our full year guidance for 2026 of 1.90 per pound with byproducts particularly molybdenum providing an offset to the impact of higher input costs putting together our projected volumes and cost estimates we show model results on slide nine for EBITDA and cash flow at various copper prices ranging from five dollars to seven dollars copper these are modeled results using the average of 2027 and 2028 with current volume and cost estimate and holding gold flat at four thousand dollars per ounce a millennium flat at thirty two dollars per pound annual ebitda would range from over 12 billion dollars per annum at five dollar copper to nineteen and a half billion dollars at seven dollar copper with operating cash flows ranging from over nine billion dollars per year at five dollars to approximately 15 billion dollars at 7 copper we show sensitivities to various commodities on the right you'll note we are highly leveraged to copper prices with each 10 cent per pound change equating to approximately 390 million dollars in annual EBITDA in the 2027 2028 periods we also have exposure to gold prices with $100 per ounce change in price approximating 105 million dollars in annual EBITDA and to molybdenum which has shown significant price strength in recent months. Each dollar per pound change in moly approximates 85 million dollars in EBIT DA per annum. With our long life reserves and large scale production we are well positioned to generate substantial cash flows to fund future organic growth and cash returns under our performance-based payout framework slide 10 shows our current forecast for capital expenditure in 2026 and 2027. our 2026 capital expenditure is currently is currently estimated to approximate 4.4 billion dollars a two percent increase from the prior estimate and 5.2 billion dollars for 2027 an increase of approximately 400 million dollars above the july estimate primarily reflecting additional mining equipment investments to support and enhance productivity improvements in the us and cost inflation the discretionary projects are expected to approximate 1.6 billion dollars in 2026 and 2 billion dollars in twenty twenty seven with roughly fifty percent related to the Kitching the Yard development and the LNG project at Grasberg. The balance includes acceleration of tailings and other infrastructure to support the Baghdad expansion, upgraded mining equipment and capitalised interests. The discretionary category reflects the capital investments we are making in new projects that under our financial policy are funded with the 50% of available cash that is not distributed. These projects are value enhancing initiatives and are detailed on slide 28 in our reference materials. The capital estimates exclude projects that remain subject to completion of final studies and board approval, including the potential Baghdad 2x expansion project. And as I mentioned on the previous slide, we'll continue to carefully manage our spending and deploy capital strategically to projects with the best return and risk reward profiles. Finally on slide 11 we reiterate that financial policy priorities centered on a strong balance sheet, cash returns to shareholders and investments in value enhancing growth projects. Our balance sheet is solid with investment grade ratings, robust credit metrics and flexibility within our debt targets to execute on our projects. We have a strong liquidity position and have substantial flexibility for funding upcoming 2027 maturity. Our strong balance sheet and significant cash flow generation supports disciplined investment in growth in future growth whilst returning cash to shareholders. And since adopting our financial policy in 2021, we've distributed $6.6 billion to shareholders through dividends and share purchases, including approximately $1 billion year-to-date in 2026 and have an attractive future long-term portfolio that will enable us to continue to build long-time value for shareholders. Our global team is focused on disciplined execution, profitable growth and long- term value creation. Thanks for your attention and we'll now turn to questions. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, press star 1 on your touchtone phone. If your question has been answered or you wish to remove yourself from the queue, please press star one again. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the numbers. 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 will come from the line of Richard Garciarino with Barclays. Please go ahead. Great. Thanks. And congrats on this quarter. First, my question on Grasper, given the progress that you're seeing with ramp-up on track production from Block 1S expected for mid-2027 and then full run rates by the end of the year, how should we think about the cadence of production for copper and gold? in the first half of next year versus second half and then how should we think about the mine plan heading into 28 as you ramp up even further uh thank you richard and uh we're very pleased with the progress that we're making at glasberg the um the installation of the material handling system upgrades is going well and we expect that those will be wrapping up up towards the end of this year and early next year. So I think as you look at where we are for 2027, you should see first half starting to ramp up, second half will likely be higher than the first half. But we expect with the startup of these panels that are currently down, that'll add a lot. TB1 South is not a huge contributor in 2027, but you'll see pretty significant ramp-up throughout the year, but second half will be higher than the first half, and the first quarter will probably be the lowest of the year. Our next question will come from the line of Chris Lefebvena with Jefferies. Please go ahead. Hi, Kathleen Marie Richard. Thanks for taking my question. So first, I want to say congratulations on the progress you're making at Grassburg. It's been an impressive recovery there in the last couple of quarters. But I wanted to ask about the idle facility costs, the recovery and restoration costs that you book each quarter. I think it's $240-some-odd million in the third quarter, more than $900 million year to date. And a question about that, first of all, how much of that relates to costs that are going to go away when Grassburg fully ramps in other words cost that you're spending to repair the operation versus what portion of those costs are actually kind of fixed costs that that you continue to carry going forward that's my first question is around the idle cost of grass burger okay thanks Chris and thanks for your comments the the idle costs are essentially fixed costs the accounting rules require us to charge costs that are not attributable to production directly to production costs rather than going through cost of sales. But those costs won't go away, but they will be in our unit costs going forward. We expect the fourth quarter, because rates are consistent between third quarter and fourth quarter. We suspect the fourth to be similar to the third quarter. beginning in 2027 we don't expect to have those costs treated separately and they'll be in our all-in unit costs but of course with the rising volumes we've got a very significant increase in volumes going from 700 million pounds of copper this year to 1.2 next year you'll see very low unit cost continuing it at at Grasper so it's really an accounting classification as opposed to a change in cost got it thanks and just one file one question on the u.s. operation so you're doing a lot of good work there in terms of getting mining rates up obviously grades there are low but I've noticed that recovery rates have been trending lower and wondering if that will continue and why that might be happening is the nature of the ore changing it's just something as temporary what's going there thanks thank you i'm going to let corey corey stevens cover that one uh but it is you you're right your last comment about about nature of the different types of ore that does affect recovery but but corey why don't you give us some color on that yeah so kathleen and team the the really the recovery rates are driven by the how the ore body presents itself and um you know we've really been mining lower volumes in past years uh to be honest missing expectations of where we really wanted to be and there's a bit of catch-up at this point in time as we increase volumes and the ore presents itself to get to the better locations for for better grade and so that's where a lot of our focus is really placed on increasing mine performance and really adjusting to the the employed various technologies as as we go forward we've launched our officially launched a remote operating center here in phoenix that really couples a high operating standard with state-of-the-art technology and analytics to be able to deploy and and work with the teams at sites to help them be successful as they work through the higher volumes we're implementing new tooling with you know new um higher payload ultra-class fall trucks better mine plans and road designs but really we see the solution going forward at this point with with higher volumes to really set these processing plants up and then coupling that with the new technologies that we're developing on the on the leach enhancements and and the additives on that front. So do you expect the recovery rates to rise from where they are today, or should they stabilize where they're at? Yeah, so really that kind of goes back to this additive development work, which is really giving us a lot of confidence that, you know, our Gen 1 additives we've deployed in 2025 and 2026, That's really giving us expected results from our lab protocols, and that gives us confidence that our Gen 2 additives are really going to really launch us into this next phase of development that really could change quite everything in terms of how we're going to be leveraging the copper that's in the existing stockpile, but also harness the resource that's the ground still um so we're really pretty excited about where that's that's headed um and we've got limited um you know demonstrations that are in the portfolio right now that's really going to you know set the stage for how we won't really want to leverage that going forward but we're quite optimistic on how that's going to play out and yes there's going going to be learnings with with those commercial deployments that we have planned in 2027, but the team stands ready to adapt and adjust as we pursue America's copper champion. And, Chris, you know, I think you're referring to, Corey was talking about the leach recoveries, but I think You're also referring to the mill recoveries and those are impacted by the types of ore and what those recoveries are. So those will vary depending on the types of ores that are being milled. But as Corey was saying, you know, we're really very excited about the opportunities in the U.S. You know, we're thinking bigger and bolder. These resources are very large. They're low-grade. But the more that we can drive productivity and we're leveraging technology, we see that as a major value unlocked for us. The more that we can drive productivity, Corey talked about a different kind of trucks that we're using. We've had great success with those in Peru at Cerro Verde, and those are going to allow us to be more efficient, more productive as we go forward. And so we're really focused on increasing our mining rates in the U.S., particularly at Marinci, where we pretty much process everything that we mine there. And the more progress we make on building those mining rates up, the better we're going to be in terms of increasing production in the US, not just from the leach, but also through our mills. So we're very excited about the opportunity to enhance our operating models within our U.S. mine. Great. Thank you. Good luck. Our next question will come from the line of Katja Jancic with BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Hi. Thank You for taking my question. Maybe staying on the U. S. side, specifically on the leaching, I think you mentioned that the new additives are performing as expected, but it does seem that leaching ramp-up is a bit slower than previously expected. Can you talk about what is driving that? So, as Corey was talking about, the current additive that we're using is showing what we expected in the lab. It's consistent, maybe a bit better than what it was predicted to be in the lab. We have always been, you know, as I mentioned over the last couple of years, we've always been testing multiple additives. And so we have not yet tested in the field this next generation additive. That has the potential to put us on the path for scale. That, combined with the work that we're doing to increase temperature of our stockpiles, has the potential to really help us with scale. We've got 300 million pounds targeted in 2027 compared to just over 200 million pounds in 2026. But those new additives, which I said are being manufactured now, really show the potential that we were looking for to supercharge these recoveries. So we'll have to wait a little bit longer, but the optimism and excitement around this initiative is building because we have, as we've talked about before, over 40 billion pounds of copper that's already been mined. It's in above-ground stockpiles, and prior technologies didn't allow us to recover copper from it. And so now, with the promise of potential next generation additives, we see a real opportunity to build scale. So to date, we've been using principally operating tactics to get more solution to areas within the stockpile that were dry. But now we're able to enhance that with additives. We've started with the initial additive, but we expect that that will be replaced with these new additives we've got coming in in 2027. So this is going to evolve. It will be a dynamic period for us in 2026. But we really see it having the potential to unlock a lot of copper throughout, not just in North America, but South America, a lot of copper as we go forward. And again, this is something proprietary to Freeport. Very proud of the teams that we have that have been working on this to unlock this value. It's unlike anything we have in the mining industry because it doesn't require significant new capital. So stay tuned, but we're very, very excited about what Laja had. Thank you. Our next question will come from the line of Oris Dworkadal with Scotiabank. Please go ahead. Yes, good morning. I'm wondering if you can give us some more color on the increase to the CapEx guidance for 27. It looks like it went up $400 million from the Q2 guidance. Is that just inflation on the existing plan projects, or have you added projects to the list? Well, we've added in the category that we call other, sustaining and other, we've adding more mining equipment. As I mentioned, the success we've had with the ultra-class trucks in Peru at Cerro Verde has been very strong, And so we've added some additional trucks to allow us to continue to increase mining rates to unlock more production, more copper production as we go forward. So that was about half or so of the increase. We do have some inflation that's part of it, and we have some additional costs as we complete the project at Atlantic Copper, the circular project that we expect to complete during 2027. So those are the key categories, but as Marie mentioned, we are seeing capital cost inflation. You know, you see it in operating costs, but we also are seeing it in capital costs. The cost of the type of equipment that we purchase has gone up, and it's trended higher than CPI in recent years. So we are continuing to work to control costs, to prioritize what makes sense. But from a big picture standpoint, this industry historically in recent years arguably has been underinvested. And as we look forward at making sure that we've got the ability to grow our business in line with where we see demand for copper growing, we've gotta be thinking bigger and bolder. That doesn't mean we're not going to control spend. We're going to Control Spend. It's in our DNA, but bigger and bolder in terms of how can we get more out of our existing assets, and incremental capital spend can make us more efficient, more productive, help us address the labor challenges that we have. So we're thinking differently about the future than maybe we have in the past in terms of making sure that all these operations are producing at their max rates to be able to meet the requirements of the future. And as we've been saying, what we see in front of us is very significant growth in demand, And we've got to be prepared to step up to that demand and do it in a profitable and economic way. But that's part of what you're seeing, Oris. Thank you. Appreciate the caller. Is it fair to sort of read into this that that approach likely continues into 28 in terms of more of an elevated spend? Well, as we see the markets today, we see a need, a signal to produce more. We're going to be looking within our portfolio of what is the cheapest way, the most economic and productive way to build new capacity and get more out of what we already have, the resources that we already have. If we can add incremental capital and get benefits and quick payouts, those are things that we're going be inclined to do. Now, we've got also the major project, and our board will be considering the investment in Baghdad. We're very enthusiastic about moving forward with that project. But as we look at this, it all fits into our balance of investing in our business, growing our copper production to match what we see as strong demand going forward. the absence of supply growth across the industry, the absence of real significant supply growth. So what we're doing is trying to figure out, you know, on a brownfield basis, how can we get more to be able to meet these demands? So that's, and we'll monitor it. We'll monitor market conditions as well. You know, at Freeport, we've had a long history of adjusting to market conditions. If we need to conserve capital, we can. But as we see it right now, these are going to be very strong economic capital decisions that we're making that help us, set us up for the future growth that we are pursuing. Makes sense. Thank you. Our next question will come from the line of Lawson Linder with Bank of America Securities. Please go ahead. Thank you, operator. Good morning, Richard and Kathleen and Marie. Thank you for this call. Um, and congratulations on the nice quarter. If I could, I'd like to ask about Baghdad and the investment decision that's expected in Q426. I mean, I think this is a really exciting moment for Freeport USA. When thinking about the CapEx that you've now put out, the $4.5 billion, you've had now another quarter to refine the engineering work. do you see any potential change in that $4.5 billion estimate? And then could you just walk us through timelines? Are there any permits outstanding that still need to be concluded post an FID decision later this quarter? And, then when would be a reasonable time for us to assume commissioning would start for this asset and then ultimately run rate capacity? Thank you. Thanks. In terms of permits, we have what we need to go forward with this expansion. We've been working on it for some time. We've been spending money to ready the operation for this investment. We have been advancing work on our tailings down there that we would have needed to do anyway down the road, but to be ready for new production. We have converted the haulage fleet there to fully autonomous to prepare for the ability to scale. You know, one of the things that has been a factor for us in thinking about growing in the U.S. has been the tight labor market, particularly for the types of skills that we need. And so we have been leaning on technology to help us scale. And at Baghdad, that was the first mine we selected to deploy the autonomous trucks. And so as we move forward with an expansion, that will allow us to scale and add autonomy, continue to add autonomous trucks to scale that without needing as many people as we would have otherwise needed. But in terms of your question on the capital cost, our estimate now, you know, on a go-forward basis is still at that $4.5 billion level. We've done a lot of work on it this year. We've been working with our contractors. We've be working to make it as efficient as possible. It's a competitive market in Arizona with all of the, not just copper projects, but all the other activity really is driving demand for skills in Arizona in the semiconductor sector with all the build going on in electricity build out and data centers. It's very active time in Arizona. We have been planning this, working to de-risk the capital as much as possible, working on a model that would allow us to prefab certain of the materials so we don't have to do everything or limit what's done on site. We've been doing a lot of things to try to de risk the capital, but it is an environment where, as we mentioned, escalation, labor costs, the cost of steel, other things, tariffs, other things that are affecting cost energy markets have a degree of an impact. So all those things are things that we're taking into account, and we don't know what the future inflation will be, but in current dollars, we're drawing a circle around, you know, $4.5 billion, and we're going to work very hard to manage both the capital spend and the time schedule. We expect the project would come in within the next, from the final decision, come in around three and a half years, and so our team is well organized. One of the things about Freeport is we have a project development execution team that is best in class, and the project controls are excellent. Our work with contractors is very strong. We have an approach where we don't just turn over a project to a contractor to execute. We're right in there executing all the costs and everything are on our system so that we can manage and control those. Having said that, it's a challenging environment. But if any team was ready, this team is ready. A lot of the people on this team that we're forming were integral in getting that smelter done in Indonesia during a very challenging time during the pandemic and really worked hard to bring that project in. And so we've got resource capacity within the company that will be dedicated to this. We've got contractors that we've been working with for some time, both on the EPC side and on our labor side. And so, we feel we're ready. We're going to talk with the board about it. But this is a real opportunity for us as America's Copper Champion to leverage what we have there. The facilities are currently undersized for the size of the resource. And so we're really looking at this for the long term and to set this operation up to be more efficient, more modernized. You know, this was done in the 1940s and more modernize, and this will be a mind of the future and one that, you know, we're very excited about moving forward. So we'll make a decision with our board here soon and hopefully be on our way. In terms of the incremental production, the Baghdad we're looking at, you know, a doubling, it would be something on the order of 200, 250 million pounds a year. The concentrator size will be more than doubled. We're also, we benefit at Baghdad from a large amount of molybdenum production, so we'll be adding 10 to 12 million pounds a year of moleybdenums. So a big feature of the project is using economies of scale to bring down our costs, and that's what we're focused on across the U.S., is finding ways to reduce our costs as we go forward. Thank you very much, Kathleen. I appreciate that. Thanks. Awesome. Our next question will come from the line of Tim McTanners with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hey. Good morning, Mel. Hope you're doing well. I wanted to ask, if I could, two quick follow-ups. One is regarding the leaching discussion. Really helpful detail on the potential benefits from the new additives. I wanted to just clarify, is it possible that this additive is not in your numbers right now and could result in upside to your numbers? Or do you think that the success of the additive would be beyond 2027? Just a little more color on that. And then, yeah, I'll let, I see the other one next. Yeah, sure. We've got, we have 300 million pounds in our numbers for 27 and 28. That is lower than potentially could be expected if the additive is as successful in the field as it is in the lab and then with that data that would give us the plan to decide where to go this is a this is of a test it's a it's a commercial test we've got enough quantities that we've got manufactured to be able to fully test it. But if it's successful, this could be really what we've been looking for. And you could have a situation where leach recoveries start to compete with a mill recovery, and that could have implications to how we think about the future, like the Stafford opportunity we're pursuing um we're pursuing a mill but that could change the flow sheet some as well so um but remember our target um or our potential our aspiration is to is to scale the leach opportunity from you know just over 200 this year to 300 next year and then ultimately you know by 2030 to get to this 800 million pound level and that would be done with a combination of a successful leach additive and the increased temperatures that we're we're currently testing now as we were testing and we're just starting a project at a lobber now to heat the solution that's going into the stockpiles there we're doing some at Cerro Verde where we have smaller stock the smaller leaching operations, and we have plans to do it in Morenci as well. But we'll have to see. The testing work that we're doing is showing really strong recoveries, and it's a possibility that we may not even need heat in the U.S. if the recoveries are as good as what the lab is showing. So it's dynamic and and we'll have a lot more information as we go through 27 but it's not in it's not in our forecast we feel confident we can get to 300 but the 800 is going to depend on the results in the field and so we're not at a point where we can give guidance we we see it as a as a potential value driver that we're pursuing aggressively but we're in a point to to put it into our our forecast. Okay. I appreciate that. And if I could, I know you've been talking, of course, I'll call about organic growth opportunities, but to the extent that this high copper price yields a pretty attractive free cash flow going forward, do you consider M&A, do you consider other ways to grow outside of your organic opportunities? Always. I mean, We have our base case plan of organic growth, and at Freeport we're advantaged in that we do have a significant organic growth pipeline, but we're always monitoring market opportunities. Richard just did a podcast, for those of you who haven't seen it yet. He did a podcast with Andrea Hodder about the Fels Dodge deal. And for those of you who haven't seen it, you should see it because it's a good example. We're going on our 20-year anniversary there. And at the time, we didn't expect that opportunity to become available, but we were prepared and were ready to move on it. and it ended up being, I believe, one of the best M&A transactions in our sector, going back to looking at where we were and where Freeport is today. So we'll continue to monitor the landscape, look for opportunities that could add value to the company, but we're on a path with our base case of creating value through our organic plans. So I would not rule out M&A, but it's not, you know, our base case is our organic growth opportunities, which, you know, we can create a lot of value from. Okay, great. Thank you. All the best. Our next question will come from the line of Bill Peterson with J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead. Yeah, hi. Good morning. Nice job on the quarter, and thanks for taking the questions. I guess on the impact of cost, so $500 million higher in 26 relative to 25. I might have missed it, but can you provide a further breakdown between diesel and electricity as well as, you know, call-outs per region, U.S., Indonesia, and South America? Yeah. I think Marie covered some of that in her comments. For 2025 compared, I mean, 26 compared to 25, it's on the order of 500 million in increased energy, which includes electricity and diesel. Diesel was the biggest factor, but we are seeing increased electricity rates. We saw that quarter-to-quarter in the U.S. between second quarter and third quarter, a significant increase in electricity rates, but the biggest part of that was diesel, and you've seen more than doubling of diesel costs. But we consume about 275 million gallons of diesel a year, and 100 of that is in the U.S., and then we've got 80 in Peru and the balance in Indonesia. Thanks, Kathleen. And then I guess for the next year, the TFS for Stafford Lone Star, is there any more granularity you can provide on that timing? And I guess conceptually, when we think about the capital intensity of dollars per ton, you know, when you think about Baghdad, I'm not sure a lot of that may be U.S. related to labor and other costs. But I guess that's like over $40,000 per ton. Is that the right kind of ballpark? What would bring that in lower? What could bring that in, I guess, higher as we think about capital intensity? With the Baghdad one, you know, when you consider the molybdenum credits, so on a copper equivalent basis, it's around $35,000 a ton. Yeah. But the Lone Star, Safford, we're looking at potentially a mill on the same size as at Baghdad. We do have some gold at one of the deposits at Saffford, so that's helpful. But as I said, you know, one of the things that we are wanting to get more information on as we go into 27 to kind of form our final views on the ultimate development of Lone Star and Safford is the success of the leaching initiative. So that will play into, you Know, ultimately what the flow sheet looks like. So we're feeding in data to those studies, you know, as we get it to do the trade-off work. But one thing, Bill, that I know you know this, but one thing to point out when you're comparing capital cost intensity across different operations, one of the things that needs to be taken into account in overall economics is the U.S. fiscal situation where, you know, while you might have a higher capital intensity because of the lower grades, it offsets itself because you don't have royalties. Our tax rate is very low in the U.S., and so there's some offsetting factors that make the economics attractive. So all those things need to come into play. You can't just compare capital intensity and say one project is better than the other. Yeah, that totally makes sense. Thank you. Corey, do you want to add anything about Lone Star or Safford that I didn't mention? No, yeah, I think all those tradeoffs really are going to converge to give us the right solution. But we're trying to balance capital intensity versus the value proposition and how do we best harness the resource between leaching and milling. It's not really one solution or the other, but it's going to be a combination of both that's really unlocking the true value. Great. Thanks for that. Our next question will come from the line of Daniel Major with UBS, please go ahead. Hi, Kathleen, Richard, thanks for the questions. Maybe a couple just focusing back on Grasberg, the longer dated production guidance given in the mine plans come down a little bit over the last couple of updates. Can you just walk us through the drivers there? I think you previously said it's not associated with normalizing after the mud rush. And then associated with that, has anything changed with respect to bringing back PB1C and PB1N? And are they needed to achieve sustainable production in line with the guidance you've given over the medium term? Thank you. In terms of the overall five years at Grassburg, it's very similar to the prior guidance. I think there was a small change in 2030 from what we had previously. But in general, the plan that we laid out in the last quarter is consistent. You know, each quarter we update our plans. We go through updates to the expected mine sequence, you know, what makes sense in terms of the production rates. So right now, with this El Nino situation and limits on the mill, on the water availability, what we end up doing is reducing some production that's very low grade. So ultimately, we maximize as much as possible the metal production and adjust the mill rates to do that, to maximize it. But the long-term plans include a restart of PB1 South, as we said, by mid-year. We also are continuing to evaluate the restart of PD1C, which is where the incident occurred. And PB1C is a very small piece of our, you know, you look at 28, it's, you know, very inconsequential. As you go out, it is a little bit more by 2030. It's, uh, you know, probably 3 to 6 percent, 3 percent for copper, 6 percent for gold. in the 2030 timeframe, but we're constantly looking at what's the right way from a safety standpoint, a productivity standpoint to mine GBC, and so that'll continue to evolve as we go forward. We also are reviewing the schedule for Couching Lear. That is expected to, you know, start ramping up in the 2029-2030 timeframe. And with the focus that we've had on the GBC, We are somewhat behind on development rates in KL, so we're working on looking at our plans there to figure out what we can make up between now and then. But our focus has been on a safe and sustainable ramp-up of Grasberg, and we feel, you know, big picture, that's well in hand. Mark, I don't know if you want to add anything to any of those comments. No, you said it well. We really haven't changed anything with the PB1 North and PB1C. We continue to look at options that will potentially make it more robust. And we're also working on, you know, as we look at the five years, PB3, PB4 all play big role uh we we've been um doing some rehab in pb3 but we're beginning the undercutting and uh pb4 as well um you know along with the the major production that's coming out of pb2 right now um i think kathleen mentioned the uh the construction of the conveyor or the shoot galleries is going well both in both in the pb2 area and for the restart of pb1 cell okay our next question will come from the line of bob bracket with bernstein research please go ahead good morning coming back to the gen 2 additives you mentioned you'll have sufficient quantities to start a trial in 2027 should we think about a six to 12 month trial so that perhaps this time next year will know go will know whether it's go or no go or could it be a bit faster than that no i think that's a good i think that is a good um good good benchmark to use you know interestingly you know as it's gone In the testing we've done, the longer it stays under leach, the better recovery. So the tail continues to increase as it goes. So we'll be getting information continually, but I think we'll have some information this time next year. We'll update you quarterly, of course. This is something we're very, very excited about. can't wait to get it in and um and so we'll you know we'll keep keep you updated as we get as we have additional insight yeah the fact that you mentioned that it could compete with mill recoveries is quite a tease but my follow-up would be talking about uh grosberg risk management you have four initiatives around mud removal uh two of them underway and it feels like the the the slower of the two initiatives uh you've slipped a little should we interpret that as a good thing that the early initiatives are doing their job or how should we think about that delay from 27 to 28. i'm going to give that to mark to comment on yeah we just as we got into the two projects that you mentioned the input pumping and the drift that we're developing uh those are both going well we we we're still learning a bit more about uh uh well as we got into the drift development there was a little bit of poor ground we've gotten through that that's going well now um a lot of them were just a little Bit of an adjustment it's nothing major uh we believe all of these initiatives that are going on in parallel are going to be tools that we have available to us, and we just want to have all the options possible as we get into the PB1 restart. Obviously, El Nino has helped us out a great deal. We're getting very little water in some of the dewatering drilling that we put into the pit bottom, and that's simply because it's dried up. So, the drier weather, although it's had some challenges, as Kathleen mentioned, on our mill rate, it's really helped us in a lot of areas, particularly in GBC, on these initiatives. Very clear. Thanks for that. Our next question will come from the line of Nick Cash with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Hi, team, and thank you for answering the question here. Just wanted to jump back to the U.S. for a second and your comments of, you know, $500 million of higher energy costs versus $25 million. You know, with U. S. site production and delivery costs, et cetera, now at around $380 per pound versus $365 last quarter for the full year, just thinking, as we bridge into $27 million, how much of the cost increase should reverse with, I guess, normalized U. weather or operating rates versus remain embedded from some of the structurally, you know, higher cost inputs that you mentioned before in terms of labor or other input cost inflation? Yeah. Well, we, you know, in all of our numbers that Marie was talking about in terms of EBITDA, et cetera, you know, we have baked into our numbers kind of the current energy market environment. And so we're not, you At some point, hopefully, those will start to decline, but those are baked in. The thing that we can bring down the unit cost for in the U.S., the thing that has the biggest potential is getting volumes up, copper volumes up. And we're working to do that with increasing the mining rates. But next year, we are expecting an increase from this year. Of course, we've got the increase in leach, but we've also got some other small increases. But that really is what our goal is, is to build productivity, increase the production in the U.S. to reduce the overall cost. But we've got high energy costs right now. Acid costs, while we're insulated globally, we are affected. When you look at the U.S., we're a net buyer of acid. That's offset in our revenues elsewhere, as Marie was talking about. But it does show up, and the acid prices do show up in the unit costs. materials and supplies, you know, with the, we had moderated a lot, but now with the inflationary environment, we're starting to see increases again. So the thing that we can do the best is to improve our productivity. And, you Know, Corey was touching on some of the things we're doing to do that around technology. And that's going to be the biggest driver for us to control the unit cost is getting more productivity. That's super helpful, Kathleen. Thank you. Our next question will come from the line of Brian MacArthur with Raymond James. Please go ahead. Good morning, and thank you for taking my question. Can I go back to the comment that was made, the teaser, as Bob called it, for recoveries from the leaching that you might get up to mill-like levels? And if I looked at getting from 300 million pounds to 800 million pounds, how much of that is recovery improvement versus just more volume over time? I guess maybe the way I ask is none of this other stuff works. Can you go above 300? Or conversely, if you do get the mill-like recoveries, can you get above 800 out in 2030? ultimately it's about recoveries so you know when you look at the residual copper that's in our stockpiles you know it depends on the ore types but but at Morenci for instance the recovery is very, very low. So if you have an uplift of 40% or more, that's not going to be a meal recovery. But in places like Chino, where the leach recovery is higher to start with, you know, you add 40% or more and you get, you know you get closer to 80 or 85. So it depends on the ore types that are involved, but the thing that could help us in addition to in addition you know the residual copper is these additives are going to be helping us also with new placements. so we're just going to have to wait Brian I don't want to speculate on whether we could be over or under 800 we we've been through the the model several times and we feel that 800 is a is a you know it's aspirational but it's it's you can model it based on what we know so um let us let us you know give us a few more quarters to to to give you you know more feedback specifically on on what that could look like the the the 200 was really tactical things those are things like you know having sensors everywhere that tell you where you need to put more solution you know and so we've been we've been doing that we've injecting solution to targeted levels you know using advanced drilling and targeted drilling we've We've been using helicopters to drop drip lines where they couldn't be accessed in the past. So we've been doing a lot of tactical things to get what we call get the rocks wet. This new era over the next few years will be about technology, And it'll be about the additive plus the work we're doing to increase temperature of the stockpile. So both of those things coming together is where we see the production curve starting to scale. But we're at the point now where we have to test it and see how it does in the field and what the implications are. Great. That's very helpful, Culler. And maybe if I could ask another question, I know it's not the core business, but just on the molybdenum, it's come up a number of times in the call. You do have a slide talking about being the world's largest moly producer. How much excess capacity is there in the primary? I mean, it didn't U.S., but we think if you could get it up in these markets to be a good thing to do. So my second question is, I see sales go down next year. Is that just byproduct coming out of the U.S. mines or the international mines? Like, why would it go down this year in a good MOLLE market? Yeah, it'll vary. You know, we've got our two primary mines, and then the production will vary, you know, depending on what the production is from our byproduct mines. We're very positive on the outlook for MOLLe. You know, a lot of the same drivers that we're talking about with copper, you know, supply challenges at the same time where uses from molybdenum are growing. So we see it as a real privileged business we have in being the world's largest producer. We do have some opportunities to expand primary at Climax, and so we're kind of dusting off our old schedules of those to look at those. But, you know, our priority, Brian, is really to, you now, move copper. But we'll, you kno, we'll continue to look what the opportunities are so that we can have, you additional optionality in the in the Mali business great thanks very much Kathleen our final question will come from the line of Liam Fitzpatrick with Deutsche Bank please go ahead good morning Kathleen and team um two quick ones I hope uh firstly just a clarification on the capex guidance for uh 2027 does that include anything for Baghdad in terms of the 4.5 billion project number that could be approved later this year and then the second one is just on buybacks based on what you're showing us here on on sensitivities at current spot prices there could be a very material uplifting in cash flows next year so based on that 50 percent of available cash flows that could return to shareholders how often do you make that decision in terms of how much stock to buy back is it on a kind rolling quarterly basis or is it is it less frequent we generally monitor the the we have a policy where 50% of the cash flow is for investments in our in our future growth and the other half is for shareholder returns and so we have the dividends and then we have been using cash flows above that to get to the 50% to stocks, but we monitor it quarterly and look at our, make sure that we're being consistent with the overall distribution policy. But you're right, we're going to be generating a lot in the current market environment, and with our growth coming, you know, very significant rise in cash flows. So that will, you know by the policy, mean we have more cash to distribute while at the same time investing in growth there we do not have for the for the four and a half billion we do have anything in in in twenty seven at this point okay thank you and I'll now turn the call over to management for any closing remarks well thank you all for participating lots of good questions I just asked Richard if he wants to make any observations, comments, or closing remarks. Thanks, Kathleen. You can tell everyone that our management team, our board is very excited about Freeport's outlook and what we have available to us going forward. We appreciate your attention and your support, and if you have any follow-up questions, let us know. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that will conclude our call for today. Thank you all for joining. 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