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Boliden AB
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Ladies and gentlemen, a warm welcome to Boliden's Q4 2019 Results Presentation. My name is Olof Grenmark, and I am Head of Investor Relations. Today, we will have a presentation led by our President and CEO, Mikael Staffas; and our CFO, Håkan Gabrielsson. After that, we will have a Q&A session starting here in Stockholm and then followed by the web. Once again, a warm welcome. Mikael Staffas, the stage is yours.
Thank you, Olof, and good morning, everybody, both here and over by your computers. I think we have a lovely morning here in Stockholm with very great weather. And now we'll go through this presentation. If you look overall on the year, you will see -- I'll start with the quarter, by the way, and you will see that we have -- maybe the biggest discussion we'll have is around how we've been able to put some of the CapEx projects that we've had forward, and I'll come back to talk a little bit about that in a little moment. Otherwise, production figures for the fourth quarter are roughly in line with what we had expected with one exception, and that is that we had lower grades than we had expected in Aitik, which basically, I think, is what is explaining any differences that could have been seen. This was unforeseen. We had to, for different reasons, move into other part of the pit. This will, by the way, also continue into Q1 of 2020. But we -- as we will talk about, and I'll come back, we are still guiding for unchanged grades for the whole year. In the Smelters, we've had also a relatively good quarter. We were interrupted in Finland by the Finnish strikes that we've talked about separately in the press release. But apart from that, we've had a relatively good quarter. The working capital that had been high in previous quarters due to the big maintenance stops that we've had has more or less normalized in Q4. If you look at the whole year, we have also had a good year, generally speaking. The volumes are lower, but that's all due to grades, which is known and which we had well communicated beforehand. Apart from that, volumes are relatively good in the Mines, and then in the Smelters, we've had a year of very big maintenance, which has also been talked about during the year. The dividend that we're proposing right now is straight according to the principles that we have: 1/3 payout ratio. And then we do not have a balance sheet strength at the end of Q4 when we adjust for the ordinary dividend, that takes us over the 20% threshold for extraordinary dividends. Let's talk a little bit about the CapEx numbers that you see, which are bigger than was both you anticipated and also bigger than what had been guided for. We have been able to pull 2 big projects forward in our planning. One is the Kevitsa expansion, where we have been able to both be quick and done with the mill, and the mill test is going on as we're speaking and we have everything in place. We've also been able to time the trucking capacity that's linked to that, the shovel capacity linked to that and also the stripping linked to that well. So that we should be able to -- as come Q2, be able to ramp up production to the 9.5 million tonnes that we have promised by the end of the year previously. Their [ off ] is very good, and we feel that we've been able to adjust very well to the situation that arose. We also got an opportunity to increase the Renström mine. We got a new environmental permit quicker than we had actually anticipated for an extra 50,000 tonnes. And we have used that as an opportunity to also partially change the mining method in the Renström mine from cut-and-fill to open stope mining, which also takes some CapEx in order to get the developments ready, which has also contributed to the higher CapEx in the -- during the year. And then we have a few other issues that are there, which are maybe not so perfect. We have had more expenses stripping than anticipated, which has costed more money than anticipated. We've had both in Pushback 4 in the Kevitsa mine. But also in the South 3 pushback in Aitik, we've had more problems anticipated. We're getting the pre-stripping and getting the first levels done. That's always an issue when you're working with open pit mines, but it turned out a bit more than we thought about. And then we have some currency issue as well. If we look at the market and what has happened in the market over the last quarter, you can say it's relatively stable. We see maybe a slight slowing up of demand for our metals. It's still flat in zinc, and it's still slightly growing in both nickel and in copper, even though the growth might be on a slightly lower level than we have seen before. So there's something there behind, but we're still seeing a fundamentally good demand. And there are fundamentally very low inventories in the supply chain, which I'll show in the next coming exhibits as well. Regarding the markets around concentrates, what has been a special situation earlier in 2019 also continued into Q4, where we're seeing very high spot TCs on zinc, with the relatively limited capacity in the zinc smelting industry to take on the concentrates that's coming from the mines. And then copper is absolutely the other way around, where there's not enough copper capacity around that is pushing the spot TCs for copper down. Looking at the prices, you can see that, sequentially, quarter-on-quarter, for our metals, there has not been much change for the base metals. But you can also see that, of course, if you compare it to what we had last year in Q4 of '18, of course, we do have a lower level than we had then. You can also see here that the levels of the official inventories are quite low, and they are on the level that's more or less as low as we have seen them in the last couple of years. On the precious side, you can see that year-on-year, we're up. We're up, especially on gold, but also silver is up on year-on-year. And you can also then see that, sequentially, not so much difference compared to what we've seen before. We usually put up this exhibit here just to see where the prices are compared to the cost level in the global industry. You can see that zinc has come down actually quite a lot compared to the cost curves in the industry. And we are now having a zinc price that is relatively close to the 90th percent quartile in the zinc industry, which means that we feel that the zinc price is actually relatively safe and cannot really go much further unless there will be major cost-cutting going on in the industry that we don't really see. On the copper side, there is still some margin between the cost curve and the prices, that means that there is room for things to maneuver down before anything will happen on the supply side. And maybe that's also what we've seen in the last few weeks with the coronaviruses that has pushed down the copper price short term or short-term speculation, and that's always a possibility when you're having a situation like this. On the nickel side, you can see that the cost curve is moving upwards, which I think is quite normal. You will see that because you see some more nickel mines coming online, and they tend to be slightly higher cost than previous mines have been. And you can also see that the price right now is pretty much stuck on the, say, the 90th percentile on the cost curve, which means that there's not so much room for at least any lower nickel prices. When you add all these things together, you can see that the Boliden weighted metal price index has gone down lately. But on the other hand, the currency is helping us still. And when you weigh these things together, yes, you can see that, lately, we've had a little bit of a tip down in -- especially in the beginning of this year. If you move over to the Mines and look what we had there, you can say, compared year-on-year, we had stronger prices and terms, and we've had the projects that are ahead of schedule that we've already spoken about. The volume are lower and the volumes are lower than expected, and that's basically only or is fully only a grade issue, and Håkan will come back to talk around -- the exact numbers around that. We do also have the Finnish strike that has played into these numbers here with the Kevitsa mine being affected here in December. If you look at the full year, and I think it's a good time to sum up the full year for the Mines here as well, Aitik has had a good production year where we are ramping up and we're still aiming for the 45 million tonnes this year. And the copper grade has been around the 25% (sic) [ 0.25% ] that I think we've spoken about for the whole year. In the Boliden area, which is, of course, a smaller area, but we had a good year with good mined mill production. And we managed, this year, to be able to compensate from the other mines the depletion of Maurliden. Maurliden was not fully depleted. We had, in the early quarters, still some production from there. And that now, it is fully depleted. But as I said before, we also now had the Renström mine coming up, which means that we feel we'll be able to compensate also for 2020. Garpenberg is moving on, I think, very much according to what we've said and what it should be. We're up at 2.9 million tonnes as of now, not so much to go to the 3 million tonnes that we have as a target for 2020. Kevitsa, around 7.5. We've had a relatively tough year part -- especially in the earlier part of the year in Kevitsa, and that's especially true for the grades. You can see the grades have come down significantly. That is from a very high level. The grades in 2018 were way above the long-term average that we have, but we've also been now below the average for 2019. Kylylahti had a good production year. Unfortunately, we are coming to the end of life-of-mine there. But you can see also here that, just as a point of it, we have about 500,000 tonnes of -- 500 tonnes of cobalt that we have produced in that mine over this last year. In Tara, the production has increased quite a lot compared to 2018 from 2.2 million to 2.5 million tonnes. But the grades have gone down quite significantly, from also, once again, grades that were pretty high. But also now, for 2019, we're below the long-term average. If we -- see if I can -- maybe I have to do like this. No, this is stuck. Maybe somebody needs to help me. Fortunately, this doesn't seem to be much stuck in any direction. Maybe I can do like -- this is now the last one. How do we work with the cursor? Now it work -- with the cursor it worked there. So we'll see if we can -- happens to the next one. Mine production in the quarter. Well, we've had the effects of the strike and the lower grades, which of course affected the copper production quite a lot, where zinc production has actually been quite good. Although we had lower grades also in Garpenberg for the quarter, but the zinc production is a relatively good level. Kevitsa also -- nickel also affected by the levels in Kevitsa. At this stage, let's also talk about what we do every year, talk about the update on the R&R statement. We've been exploring as much as ever or actually even more than ever. We are done with the drift down to Rävliden and we're halfway in the drift for Tara Deep. That is, by the way, not according to plan. We should have been further on by now, but we've had issues during the year to move that one on and we've been doing exploration from surface instead in Tara Deep. In the long life-of-mines that we have in Aitik, Kevitsa and Garpenberg, there are limited new reserves, which is also in line with our practice because these are relatively far out. I'll come in a little bit on with the detail. What is interesting to point out is that we're actually having higher grades this year in Aitik compared to last time we did this, and that's despite that we've been mining above reserve grade average over the year, which normally should put the rest of their average down. But we've been able, with optimization and new geological information, to get this one up slightly. We have Tara Deep, about 4 million extra tonnes of inferred resources at very good grades. We are still very positive about Tara Deep as the exploration is slightly behind schedule because of the fact that we had to drill from surface rather than from the underground drift. But we're still happy with what we've gotten, and Tara Deep is still opened in basically every dimension. In Kylylahti, we have decided to close it down. So we have also written off any remaining mineral resources that we had. Now let's see if this -- we got the next one. So in Aitik, we do have still 26 years life-of-mine as in the reserve, and we have a copper grade of 0.23% right now as an average. In the Boliden area, which is a tricky area because with relatively short life-of-mine, it is very important that we get this 1 year per year upgrade. This year, we got slightly more than 1 year in a year, and we also have slightly improved grades in the Boliden area, which we feel good about. In Garpenberg, which is also a very long life-of-mine, we do not have so much difference in terms of the reserves. They're very much like where they were last year. We still had 25 years reserve life. Those of you who read the details, will see that we have quite a lot of more resources -- inferred resources that comes basically from further exploration at the lower levels of Kvarnberget, that we also feel good about. In Kevitsa, which is long life-of-mine but also still important that we get 1 year per year, here, we have slightly more than a year in this year, and we have 14 years left, which means this now is a 2034 life-of-mine mine. You can also see the nickel grade is slightly up here, the copper grade is slightly down, but the mix is also up. In Kylylahti, we have written off whatever is left. We have about 500,000 tonnes. We will mine out Kylylahti somewhere in the second half of the year. In Tara, we do have some increases, even though it's not fully 1 year per year in the old mine, where we also have higher grades at 6% rather than 5.7%. That we all feel good about. And then we have the extra resources coming down into Tara Deep, and also, by the way, some other inferred resources around the old Tara mine. In the Smelters, coming into the quarter, we had better prices and terms, also good zinc TCs helping here and also the dollar is helping. And here, the projects are on plan. The maintenance that was done still in this quarter was on plan. We've had some lower volumes here. It's basically the Finnish strikes and to some extent if you look at metals, it's lower grades in the raw materials. We've had some disturbances in the copper smelters, including the fact that we did some more maintenance, but it's relatively small. We have a production record in Odda. For the full year, well, the full year is, of course, very much marked by the very big maintenance stops that we've had earlier in the year, especially in Rönnskär, that's at an all-time high in terms of maintenance, is also marked by the nickel failure that we had during the summer in Harjavalta. Those are all history, but relatively good [ speaking ]. But the other thing that's been really good this year has been the zinc smelters, both in terms of prices and terms but also stable production, where you can see that Odda has a record annual production as well. And Kokkola, although it's slightly less than the year before, is also having a good production year. And very soon now with the new plastic separation plant in place, this also had a very good year. If you look at it in the quarter, well, the quarter number were affected by the strikes in Finland. And on the copper side, with some disturbances. But you can still see it's picking up from the very heavy maintenance quarters that we had before, but slightly lower than previous year. On the zinc side, yes, things are going relatively well and the production record in Odda, of course, helps. The nickel matte production is down, partially due to the strike and also partially due to catching up a little bit, to come from the old -- the nickel furnace meltdown taken a while. With that, I will leave this to Håkan to go through, and you can talk about the financials.
Thank you. So let's see. This did -- yes, it works. Good morning. As you've seen, we reported an EBIT excluding process inventory of SEK 1.7 billion in the quarter. We have mined, as Mikael indicated, in lower grade areas than expected in Aitik. And I will come back to the grades in the peer-to-peer comparisons later on. Projects in CapEx are ahead of plan, which led to higher CapEx, and that translates into a cash flow of just over SEK 800 million. I'll come back to that as well. Looking segment by segment, Mines had an EBIT of SEK 890 million, down because of grades. Smelters is up compared to last year due to stronger prices and terms, primarily zinc and dollars, and also a bit up compared to last year -- to last quarter, Q3. We have had less maintenance, but we also had an impact of the strike in Q4. Looking year-on-year, quarter 4 of this year compared to quarter 4 last year, we're SEK 300 million down. The impact of lower grades was about SEK 700 million quarter-to-quarter. Out of that, about half of that was in Aitik. In addition -- and those SEK 700 million you can see in the volume line here. In addition, there were a few other things that had an impact on volumes that all offset each other. We had an impact of the strike, about SEK 100 million negative. We have slightly lower free metals in smelting, but we do have higher mill production in Mines. Looking at prices and terms that had a positive contribution compared to last year, primarily due to a stronger dollar and also higher zinc TCs that have been very beneficial to our smelting side. Costs are about 1% up, SEK 48 million. That's a couple of things in there: inflation, a bit more maintenance or a bit -- sorry, a bit more maintenance than last year and also an increased production. If we then move over to Q4 compared to Q3, there are 2 things that have a big impact here, that's basically the lower level of maintenance shutdowns in smelting and the grades in Mines. We're slightly up EBIT-wise, looking at the volume -- in total, we have a SEK 300 million positive impact from less maintenance stops, about SEK 250 million of that shows up in the volume line here. That is, however, offset by lower grades in Mines. Relatively small movements in prices and terms. Most metal prices up, the exception being nickel. But all in all, a slight positive impact compared to Q3. Costs, just over SEK 100 million, higher than in Q3. We typically talk about SEK 150 million seasonal effect between Q3 and Q4, as Q3 is impacted by holiday periods. The increase is slightly lower this year. And the reason to that is that we had higher maintenance costs in Q3. Full year, we record an EBIT, excluding process inventory, of SEK 7 billion, SEK 8.8 billion investments, which Mikael talked about, and that translates into free cash flow of SEK 635 million. The explanation to the lower cash flow is primarily then, of course, the lower earnings and the higher CapEx. There is some effect, but not as big in working capital. We finished last year on almost critically low levels of working capital. And this year, we finished on pretty much normalized working capital levels. Looking at the development of the profit full year. We're roughly SEK 2 billion lower this year. And again, the main reason to that is lower grades. The SEK 2.5 billion negative volume impact here is fully explained by lower grades, primarily in Aitik but also in a couple of the other mines. There are a few other areas that also impacts the volumes, but that offsets each other. And one thing that I would like to highlight is that we have almost SEK 1 billion worth higher mill production in Mines, 2019 to 2018. That is offset by a big maintenance years in smelting and slightly lower free metals. But nevertheless, a good development of mill production in Mines. Prices are SEK 1.3 billion up year-on-year. That's primarily a stronger dollar, stronger precious metals. And at the other hand, we've seen lower copper and zinc prices. This price change has been very beneficial to smelting, while Mines is roughly flat year-on-year. You will find that in the [ bridges ] by business areas. Cost increases, roughly 4% up. Inflation, we feel, is at around 1% level, but then we've had a production increase. And as I said, '19 was also a year of heavy maintenance. Moving over to cash flow. We released SEK 1.7 billion from working capital in the quarter. So with that, working capital is now normalized. And you can see that the cash flow from working capital is better in Q4 this year than Q4 last year, and above all, better than Q3. We're ahead of the CapEx plans, which translates into a high CapEx number, SEK 3.3 billion. We also had slightly higher taxes paid. We talked about that in the last quarter, and that came in as expected. And that translates to a free cash flow of SEK 822 million, which is clearly lower than last year, but the best quarter this year. And that translates into a strong balance sheet. We've got a gearing of 13% if we count the financial debt only. If we add the net reclamation debt, we're up to 18.4%. Financing is robust, 1.1% average interest rate and 3.4 loan duration. So we feel that we have a strong financing and a strong balance sheet. So with that, Mikael?
Thank you, Håkan. Let me then just summarize this by taking 2 areas of, I think, interest to you. See if this one works.The dividend. Just to remind everybody about our dividend policy, we have 1/3 payout ratio. We have hit that number more or less as exact as you can. When you divide 21 by 3, you get 7. Then we had the discussion about extra dividends that we've had in the previous 2 years. When we add up the gearing that we have and add up the net reclamation debt and also take into consideration the dividend that we are proclaiming regarding the ordinary dividend, we are ending up, I think, around 23% gearing, which is higher than the 20% threshold that we usually have for giving extra dividend. And therefore, the Board and I have required an agreement as we discussed this late last night around the fact that this is not a time for extra dividends. That will come when the balance sheet is stronger, and we're sticking exactly to the policy that we have announced. Going forward, well, Aitik is now ready and going, and we're aiming up to get to 45 million tonnes. We might not get exactly that pace in Q1. We're still a little bit behind on the Aitik side and we're still waiting for getting some of the trucking capacity that we need. But basically, we are there. On the grade side, we will continue to see similar grades in Q1 as we saw in Q4. We're still in slightly lower grade areas than we would like to be. But as we come into Q2 and forward, we should be able to get back into also the Pushback #6, which are giving us the higher grades that we have not really been mining for the last quarter. In Garpenberg, we will get to 3 million tonnes this year. That is a guidance that is reiterated many times around. And the grade guidance is also the same as you've seen before. In Kevitsa, we will get, as we said, to the 9.5 million pace by Q2, which means that Q1 we're not kind of quite there yet. We're still test driving and getting the mill up to speed. The grades will also be lower there in Q1. For the whole year, they will be slightly below reserve, as we said before, but they will be lower than that in Q1 as we are also there in parts of Pushback #3, with relatively lower grades that we need to come through before we get into the better-grade areas. In Tara, we've had a breakdown of a conveyor from the crusher #5. The crusher #5 is the main workhorse of the Tara system. Somewhere between 70% and 80% of the ore comes through crusher #5. This was -- this is a 1.5 kilometer long conveyor that takes you up to -- or up from the lower crusher #5, which is almost 1,000 meters below surface. That one broke down. And when these kind of conveyors break down, you also get the rock falling backwards into the system. So we've had quite a lot of work to clean up this. We -- because we only got 20% to 30% normal ore, we've also stopped the concentrator during this time. We've built some more. We're starting the concentrator, I think, actually today. We hope that we have the conveyor online again early next week. And so the mill is going on, on that kind of small order that has come up. We're losing 16 days of production in Tara because of this. And regarding maintenance, you see the numbers down there, how we're guiding for the year of about SEK 300 million of EBIT impact from maintenance stops. With that, we will open the floor for questions.
[Operator Instructions] And the first one out is Oskar Lindstrom, Danske Bank.
Yes. I'll start off with a question around CapEx. And do you have any guidance for CapEx for 2020? And how does the higher CapEx then guided for in the fourth quarter here of 2019, does that impact your CapEx for 2020?
As you will have read and will have seen, we have not said anything about CapEx guidance. That, of course, means that in lack of any other information, the old information that we gave last quarter still stands. What happens here and what we are working on right now is that, of course, we've done certain things that was supposed to be done in 2020 in 2019, that will lower the number. But as we also start producing out of the new -- at a new higher pace, we will also need to do more stripping and so on. So there is a plus and minus in this. But as lack of any other information, the SEK 7 billion still stands.
So just to understand, the previous guidance did not include more stripping due to higher production levels?
No, the previous guidance was due -- was based upon that we were going to reach the higher production only in the end of the year. And now we're reaching the higher production already in Q2, that will require more stripping.
Right. Just a second question, if I may, a little bit on the Tara conveyor. When was the breakdown and what caused it? And really, are we sure it's going to be back in production again?
Well, it was a -- what you called in English, the conveyor belt drift apart, which happens now and then in conveyors. And if you're unlucky, you get more severe consequences like we've got at this time. It happened, I think, January 29 or something like that. Of course, once you -- that happens, you don't know exactly what the consequence is. And as we've been working with it, there were more consequences than we thought. We didn't think that it was going 16 days originally. Now the best estimate is it's going to take 16 days, which is, I think, starting up again on Monday.
All right. And will it have any impact on your grades or...
It should not have impact there.
Are there any big sort of costs related to the cleanup other than the lost production?
No, there should not be lots of costs. There will be some costs that should not have any impact on the grades. It's basically a loss of production because, as you know, in Tara, the mine is a bottleneck. In Tara, we can have a stoppage in the mill and we can catch up, but we cannot have a stoppage in the mine and catch up.
Christian Kopfer, Nordea.
Just to follow-up on the CapEx side, because I'm a little bit puzzled here because when you had the guidance previously, it was quite late in the year, right? We were in late October, and you're still guiding for around SEK 8 billion. So you should -- and you should also probably have some contingency in your CapEx, and you say that you blame the FX, for example, in stripping. But how come you didn't know anything about that so late in the year?
Well, some of those smaller numbers, of course, we knew about. But when the numbers are small enough, you don't guide around them. But the big part of that was actually things that were decided afterwards.
And the -- you don't have any contingency, say, 10% to 15% in your CapEx numbers or...
No, we have very much a tendency of delivering CapEx on time and on budget. And now we're pretty ahead of budget. And I think that regarding Kevitsa, you know that we have guided previously for what the total cost is, both around trucks and around everything else. And we have not guided today for any overruns. It's just previous timing. And of course, you can argue then, no, we don't have any contingencies for doing things faster.
Okay. But do you have any contingency for the guidance for 2020 then?
But I don't know exactly what you mean, Christian. We have contingencies in all our numbers when we do things. And on average, those contingencies are actually used. So on average, that's why we typically come in on budget because we use the contingencies that we have in there. We don't have contingencies just hanging around. So we have contingency to make sure that the operations have the right kind of ambition to be able to land on time and on budget.
Okay. On the maintenance top effect that you guide for 2020, SEK 300 million, right, so this would be a low maintenance here. But if you go back, that was SEK 200 million less last time around, so what is the reason for this quite material increase?
Well, I'm not sure that you can compare year-on-year in that sense. But you're right that the average maintenance cost has increased. We have expanded a number of the smelters, added process steps, added capacity. And that means that, over time, the effect of the maintenance stop has increased. And then one further thing is that the bigger part of the maintenance stop is actually lost production, the effect of lost production. With higher prices, you also get a higher impact in EBIT.
Okay. Makes sense. Can you say over time through the cycle or anything about what is the maintenance level per year on average for the next 2, 3 years or...
I think that's very difficult to say. I think it's difficult to get something better than looking backwards and doing an average out of that.
Okay. And then for Aitik, you guide for still lowered -- or say, remaining -- that low-grade should remain also for Q1, right? And does that mean that you expect grades to be higher than the 0.25% then for the remainder of the year?
Yes. Otherwise, you won't get the 0.25% average.
Yes. But the communication with regards to that previously has not been that clear. Okay, but that's good. Okay. And then finally, on the dividend side, I'm a little bit puzzled, to be honest, here. Because you're so strong balance sheet and you are also now below 20%, even if you include the reclamation. And previously, you are not -- so now you include the dividend also in the net debt to -- or in the gearing, which is supposed to be paid out in April, right? But then you should have some positive cash flow, something like that. So can you just explain how you can arrive at this conclusion?
I think you're always explaining to yourself. Of course, we take the decided ordinary dividend into account when we look at this. And if you look historically, that's also what we've done roughly coming into the -- what amount of dividend we could give. So I don't think it's any change. We have a very strict and -- well, not only is it strict, we have a very clear policy that we've been adhering to.
But previously, if you have arrived below the gearing target, also including -- say, below gearing target 20% than you have been previously, very clear that you will pay out an extra dividend.
I think what we have done, at least over the last years, when this has been on the table is that we've looked at balance sheets year-end, we've added the effect of the normal dividend, the ordinary dividend, and if it's still below 20%, then it has been considered an extra dividend. This year, I think when you add back the ordinary dividend, we're up to around 24% including the reclamation debt. And that means that there isn't -- according to our policy, room for an extra dividend this year.
Gustaf Schwerin, Handelsbanken.
Firstly, on the Aitik volume ramp-up now for 2020, just to clarify a few things. I think your run rate now is slightly below what was at least indicated at the Capital Markets Day last year. And if we get the normal sort of seasonality effect in Q1, we have to assume quite healthy increases in production. Just to clarify, I mean, should we see this as total volumes for 2020? Or is it more of a run rate sort of thing for this year?
Total volume.
Very clear. Then secondly, on Tara, I think we saw stable zinc grades for the first time in a while. Any help on how we should view that in the short term? Is it the reserve grade that is the best estimate?
Yes.
Ola Soedermark, Kepler Cheuvreux.
Ola Soedermark, Kepler Cheuvreux. Can you talk a little bit about stripping? It was SEK 200 million effect from increased stripping in the quarter, and this -- it was due to planned higher production at Kevitsa. Is it a level that is going to continue there and be capitalized?
No. The SEK 200 million that we showed is not really due to planned higher level in Kevitsa, the SEK 200 million that we showed is due to higher costs for stripping. And the higher cost has -- some part is due to the increased diesel tax that we got because diesel is usually used for stripping, much more than it's used for the actual ore transport. So part of this is due to that. But the larger part is actually due to simple cost overruns on stripping, which had to do with problems that we had both in Aitik and in Kevitsa on the new pushbacks and getting through the top layers and the topsoil removal. So it's more of a cost overrun. Actually, the extra stripping that we've done in Q4, to be able to get going in Q2 with a higher level, that's actually included in that first SEK 500 million that you saw in the first half. So the SEK 200 million is actually more of a cost overrun.
So it's more a one-off or...
It's -- we think it's more a one-off. But of course, this has puzzled us a little bit. What should make it more of a one-off is that this topsoil removal that has caused all the problems. We're actually through that for these 2 pushbacks, more or less. So it should be more of a one-off. But we're also trying to get a little bit deeper into exactly what the cost has been and why we have not achieved the productivity, which is the other side of the same coin in the stripping as we would have liked to see.
Because if you take 200 times 4, it's a meaningful number.
It is. It is a meaningful number. Now some of that is a little bit of adjustment of previous quarters. But it is a meaningful number, yes.
And it would be great if you could kind of explain a little bit of your view of the coronavirus impact on metal markets and concentrate markets, and what happens when concentrates are directed from China? And what kind of dynamics and the implication we can see for you?
I mean, I can say that the main thing that we're seeing has nothing to do with any physical flows or any reality. It is due to speculation in the market when people start speculating that China will have 1 or 2 or 3 percentage points in lower growth, then they will also have lower demand of copper, which means the copper price goes down. And especially when you have a copper price that is above the cost curve numbers, there is a headroom downwards, if you want to say so and then that happens. In terms of real impact, we have not really seen anything yet that concentrate that was heading for Chinese smelters, for some reason, could not go to China. That we have not seen yet. If that were to happen, well, then I think we will see, of course, much higher copper TCs, especially. But we haven't seen any of those kind of physical changes yet.
Robert Redin, Carnegie.
Robert from Carnegie. Two questions, if I may. On Aitik, you talked about the grades being lower at the start of the year and higher at the end of the year. So at the end of the year, above 0.25%, how should we think about going into '21? Should we expect Aitik grades above reserve grade average?
We haven't guided for that yet because we are not that far in our planning. But I think it's prudent not to think that they're going to be above the average. That's the prudent way is to think it's going to be on average. And you know, everybody knows, that we're heading generally downwards. I mean we were -- we will also be below reserve grade average for a couple of years going forward.
Okay. Right. And just bookkeeping. This second SEK 100 million cost in Finland related to the strikes, how did that sort of -- how is that on Mines and Smelters?
It's 3 units. And it's fairly close to our Tara Deep units. So 2/3 in Smelters for the Harjavalta and Kokkola units and 1/3 in Mines for the Kevitsa mine.
Any more questions from the audience in Stockholm? Viktor Trollsten, Den norske Bank.
So firstly, on the Finnish strikes, please. Could you elaborate a bit on what's happening there? And maybe potentially also how that could impact costs going forward with higher salaries and so forth.
We do have a collective bargain agreement for 2 years or 25 months now in place for the blue collar. The average or the salary increase of that was 3.3% over that 25-month period, which is 1.6% or so per year. But then there were other time, working hour adjustments and so on, are saying is that the cost of that is roughly 2% per year increase. We have -- since we don't have it signed yet, but we basically have a white collar agreement in place since earlier this week that is on very similar levels. That's the lower white collar union. The higher white collar union, we still haven't really signed, but let's assume it's going to be the same. So the strikes should hopefully be over. We do still have one issue, which is not really us, but electricians in Finland are striking. It has more to do with union fighting with each other, about who gets to sign the collective bargaining agreement and not really about salaries.
Okay. Brilliant, brilliant. And also just a second one on cost in Aitik going into 2020, I think I have looked at previous transcripts that you have been talking about significantly lower costs in 2020 due to higher volumes and so forth. What are your expectations on costs now going forward?
Well, we're not going to guide a specific number. But of course, as we ramp up to a higher production volume, the idea is to get clear cost benefits from that.
Operator, that opens up for questions from the web, please.
The first question from is from Conor Rowley from Crédit Suisse.
I just have one question on Tara Deep. So you've done a lot of exploration on it this year and you've seen some increase in your resource. What's the schedule now for the next couple of years in terms of more exploration on that project? And is it more fine-tuning? Or are you still trying to work out what the size of the project is? Because I'm just sort of looking and based on, let's say, today's run rate of production at Tara, that Tara Deep has a mine life of about 10 to 12 years. I mean, is that enough? Or do we need to see more exploration success before that project is viable?
We definitely are looking -- well, put it this way. We're not working to get it from inferred to indicated, so we're not working on more dense drilling, we're working to still figure out how big it is. As I said, it's open basically in every direction. So we still have hopes that this 22 is just a start. It's going to be much more. And as we hopefully, towards the -- towards Q3 this year, we'll come into a position with the drift, so that we can start underground drilling and get more cost-efficient drilling going on. We can speed this up. But -- and get it more. But as I said, it is not at all defined yet. And then coming to the other part of your question, what if it were to stay exactly where it is today, the 22 million tonnes, which is, I suppose, more like 8 years of production, will we mine it or not, well, we don't really know because we haven't done any mine planning. But yes, theoretically, a lower tonnage could be used as an extension of the existing mine and mine it through the existing infrastructure. Relatively cheap low CapEx but higher OpEx because of long underground transportation. Our ambition is not to do that, our ambition is to see that we can get this one big enough to motivate new infrastructure to get down the OpEx in Tara. How? Well, we're timing this in the sense that we want to push it out as far as possible, but we don't want to close the Tara mine and then restart it again. And right now, as you saw, we got another year or almost another year in old Tara mine that now has a life-of-mine up until '27. With that in place, we say that we probably need to make a decision somewhere '23, '24 regarding Tara Deep. Not to lose time. But if we're successful with exploration in the old Tara mine, that could maybe position -- potentially also be pushed even further out. Because as anybody that has done with mines knows, that the more you know [ geodetically ] before you start putting in any CapEx, the better it is. We want to make sure that we avoid a situation like we had in Kristineberg, where we today have a very unfavorable infrastructure. Because at no single individual time in the last 30 years has it been possible to motivate a major CapEx into investments -- into infrastructure or into new shafts. But had we known what we know today, in 1990, we would've done a major investment and we would have lowered the total OpEx and we would've a higher -- much higher NPV. But that's the fact of life that you cannot make those decisions on speculation. But in Tara Deep, we have the ambition to make as much drilling as possible before making a decision.
The next question is from Alain Gabriel, Morgan Stanley.
Two questions from side. Firstly on the Tara, the old mine. Given the recurring operating issues there, should we think that the operations there is undercapitalized, and by extension, is the CapEx guidance for 2020 and beyond a bit too complacent around that mine? That's one. And two is on the resource update that we have seen this morning. There has been a meaningful cut to your Aitik resource base, almost 26%. Do you mind shedding a bit more color or light on the reasons behind that meaningful drop in resources?
Yes. Regarding Tara old mine, Tara is an old mine and Tara does have old infrastructure. That is true because it has not motivated lots of big investments for a long time. We do not see that we have a major problem that we will have to redo major things in Tara. And that Tara, with maintenance and other OpEx, will be able to remain throughout this kind of useful life for 7 or 8 years without any major investments. Regarding the resource update, you're absolutely right, we're having a cut in the Tara -- in the Aitik resources. As you know, Aitik has a very flat grade profile. That means that there are lots of -- wherever you put your cut off, there's lots of volume both below and above that. And in Aitik, if you start looking at those years far out, the -- where we have most of those low grades and you see they're not even in the present mine plan, they're above -- beyond that. There are areas that we could not make economically viable with a higher cost. This is partially due to the diesel tax that has come in, which makes mining more expensive. And partially due to a general update of cost estimates for that part. In terms of value for Aitik, this should not be a big issue because these were marginal tonnes.
Our next question is from Liam Fitzpatrick, Deutsche Bank.
First question on -- just coming back to CapEx. It was only last year when there were fairly big concerns in the market around your go-forward investment levels. And with the update today, that seems to be creeping back into the story. So I mean, do you anticipate being able to give us an update on 2020 CapEx guidance within the relative near term, say, with the Q1 or Q2 results? And when should we expect an update on 2021 guidance? And then secondly, on Aitik, can you just run us through why you didn't hit the 45 million tonne run rate by the end of 2019? When you expect to hit it in 2020? And based on the 45 million tonne per annum guidance for this year, does that imply that, ultimately, you think Aitik can operate above that 45 million tonne on a steady state basis?
If I start with the second one, there is, as you know, a seasonality in Aitik that has to do with winter and summer. So yes, we did not hit it in Q4, the pace, partially because we had winter, partially because some of the investment that was needed, including the pebble crusher, were only commissioned very late in Q4. For Q1, with normal winter conditions, you could argue that even if we have a kind of 45 pace, we would not have a 45 divided by 4 number for Q1. So that is -- we're likely to have winter this year as well. Regarding whether we think we can go beyond 45, while we have an environmental permit for 45, so we cannot go beyond that without a new permit. New permit or permit revision is up for grab at '23 anyway. And of course, we are thinking about whether to apply for a bigger permit or a new permit with bigger numbers or not. That we will come back to, over time. It's not yet decided. If we then move back to the CapEx for 2020 and 2021, it is clearly our ambition to come back in Q1 about 2020 and 2021 in Q3.
The next question is from Luke Nelson, JPMorgan.
Again, just a follow-up on the CapEx this year. Can you give an indication of how much stripping is budgeted now in the SEK 7 billion guidance? And also, if you can break out the SEK denomination versus euro/USD-denominated CapEx? And then my second question is on Tara. Is it possible to give -- to quantify the EBIT impact from that 16-day shutdown, potentially between the volume effect and also any additional maintenance?
If we start with the Tara, I think it's fair to just assume that we've lost 16-day production, and you can see what that does on revenues. Then you save some costs on electricity, but maybe has some higher cost on maintenance while you're down. So let's assume that's a fair way, and you can do the numbers yourselves. Regarding CapEx and stripping, we have guided at SEK 4.5 billion out of the SEK 7 billion is mine-sustaining, that is including stripping, underground development, dam raises and so on. And out of that, Håkan, how much is stripping? Roughly...
The SEK 4.5 billion is replacement CapEx, so including replacement investments. Stripping is about SEK 1.7 billion if you talk about the 2 open pit mines. SEK 1.7 billion.
Yes. And the currency mixture totally for us is roughly, say, 50-50 euro-SEK, just to give a rough number. But this, of course, varies with the projects over time. There's a little bit of dollars involved as well, but that's not so much.
Next question is from Amos Fletcher from Barclays.
A couple of questions. I guess, first question on Aitik. I guess I wanted to ask you, 3 months ago, you were asking -- sorry, you were guiding for 0.25% over the next 5 quarters. Does that still effectively stand, including the fact that we've had 0.22% in Q4, and it sounds like that might continue for Q1?
I want to remind you that we do have a plus/minus 10% margin of error anytime we say anything about grades on a quarter. Over time, we tend to be much more exact, even though we've kind of gone up and down between quarters. I think we guided for 0.25% in the beginning of '19 and ended up to be 0.25%. Now we're guiding for 0.25%, and it's very hard to end up 0.25%, but we know that next quarter is going to be below.
Okay. And then on -- a quick question on the 2020 CapEx numbers. If we're not getting SEK 0.5 billion reduction in 2020 from the extra CapEx on accelerating Kevitsa and Boliden area, doesn't that just mean there's an overrun on those projects?
Well, no, because, number one, when you start operating a mine, you will need to do more stripping all the time when you're operating at a higher level. That's especially true for a mine like Kevitsa that has a 5:1 stripping ratio. So in order to -- if you assume that we're going to get 2 more million tonnes -- now this is for 3 quarters, there's 1.5 million tonnes and you take a stripping ratio of 5, it's basically 7.5 million kind of ongoing tonnes of stripping that you need to do to be able to adjust, production wise, just because you're getting in earlier. So it's not as easy as just taking out the SEK 0.5 billion. But there are other things that comes in and out because of this, and therefore, we have decided that the number that we have put in there historically is a number that you can work around, and we'll come back with more details.
Okay. And then just finally, I wanted to ask -- so it's a question for Håkan. You said cost inflation running about 1% last year. What's your sort of broad expectation for 2020, please?
Well, we are roughly at the same level. It's around 1% or possibly even slightly less, where we stand right now. And that's basically what we see going forward as well.
That's for nonlabor. And labor, as we said, in Finland is basically at 2%. There are big labor negotiations coming up in Sweden at the end of March. Before that, it's difficult to tell.
[Operator Instructions] We have one more question from Daniel Major from UBS.
First question, just to set a record on the number of questions from CapEx. Your -- changes you've, I guess, identified in terms of higher stripping, et cetera. I know you've indicated that some of those could be one-off in nature. Can you give us a reminder on your long-run sustaining CapEx? And I guess looking at ongoing projects, approvals and improvements, is it realistic to think that CapEx will always sit above that long-run sustaining CapEx level?
Well, it's a long-run sustaining CapEx. That's -- well, we have only guided for this year at SEK 4.5 billion, right?
Yes.
We haven't really done a long run. But you can assume that, that one is similar or will go up slightly as we are increasing production in several areas. That will increase the sustaining level slightly. And then you can say then the rest, SEK 7 billion minus SEK 4.5 billion is SEK 2.5 billion, that's things that are not sustaining CapEx is something that we have to do either because of expansion or environmental or something else. Number one on that is that even if we were to do no more expansions, there will be something in that category anyway. It's not going to go down to 0 because of environmental issues or other. But it will be like, of course, much less. But the other thing is that we tend to believe that we -- the part that we want to do is to find investment opportunities that do give us value added. So we want to make sure that the number is big rather than small. And hopefully, if we're successful in doing what we want to do and find growth projects, and you know about the Tara Deep even though it's a couple of years out, and there are other opportunities on the mining side, and as I was pointing out, basically, every smelter has some kind of extension projects and in the back of our minds, hopefully, we will keep on having a high CapEx number. But of course, it needs to be follow-up by very clear statements around that they make value or add value.
Okay. So just pushing that slightly. So would that be fair to assume then a sort of SEK 6 billion to SEK 8 billion CapEx run rate is sort of appropriate, say, over the next 5 years?
I will not really answer that because some of these are very much one-off, will we decide to make some expansions or not, and then we will tell you once we make the decisions.
Okay. And then the second question on the smelting business. Granted it's not the easiest business to model. But if we look into this year, 2020, you've got about a SEK 450 million delta on lower maintenance. You're also, I guess, coming towards the end of completing just over SEK 3 billion, SEK 3.5 billion of CapEx that I'm assuming will generate a return that will come through the earnings line. Is there any other factors we should be thinking about in terms of modeling that organic growth or the growth number in earnings from smelting into 2020 beyond the delta in maintenance?
You got the maintenance side and you got the CapEx side, and then, of course, prices and terms. I think that will be the main points.
But we do have some growth coming through in Harjavalta on the copper side, right?
Yes.
In line with the...
With the CapEx guidance.
In line with the CapEx guidance that we have for the one. So it's not just the same business.
Okay. So we have your sensitivities for the inputs: FX, TCs and prices and the like. So we should be thinking, you add the delta and the maintenance plus some organic upside through that -- the volume growth and other margin as a consequence of the CapEx. Is that a fair assumption?
I think it is, yes.
At the moment, we do not have any further questions from the conference call.
Okay, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for attending. Our time is out. We will be back with the next report on April 28. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you.