JOHANNESBURG – Anglo American said yesterday that it was in a stronger financial position following a year of performance improvements which had made it set a new production guidance two percent higher than the previous one.
Mark Cutifani, chief executive of Anglo American, said the group has completely transformed the quality of its asset portfolio and its performance as a whole over the last five years after disposing of some of its assets in South Africa and raising over $4 billion.
“We have created a highly competitive business, with Anglo American among the very best in the industry in terms of margin. We see considerable further opportunity ahead and continue to target $3 billion to $4 billion of incremental annual Ebitda (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) by 2022,” Cutifani said.
“This will come from a combination of meeting or surpassing industry best-practice equipment performance across our operations; volume growth from existing and new operations, such as Quellaveco; and the deployment of our FutureSmart Mining technologies and digitalisation. It is these technologies that will transform how we mine, process and market our products, providing the next step change in our performance.”
Cutifani was hosting a briefing for investors and analysts to provide an update on the group's current and projected operational and financial performance covering guidance for the next three financial years, including capital expenditure, and an update on its broad range of organic growth options.
He said Anglo American continued to improve its performance during 2018, and was now expecting production to be 2percent above previous guidance and costs 5percent below. “We are also confident about the outlook for 2019, 2020 and 2021,” he said.