Ivanhoe Mines Ltd

TSX:IVN

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q2

[Operator]

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Ivanhoe Mines Q2 2022 Financial Results Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded.

At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Matthew Keevil, Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Communication. Please go ahead.

[Matthew Keevil, executive]

Thank you, operator. Hello, everyone. My name is Matthew Keevil, and I'm the Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Communication for Ivanhoe Mines. It is my pleasure to welcome you to our second quarter 2022 conference call.

We will finish today's event with a Q&A session. You can submit a question using the Q&A box on the webcast page as well as through the conference operator via your phone lines. Given our time constraints, we will likely be unable to answer every question. Our apologies if we run low on time. Our IR team will endeavor to collect all the questions for follow-up.

Before we begin today, I'd like to remind everyone that the event will contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Details of the forward-looking statements are contained in our August 15 news release as well as on SEDAR and on our website at www.ivanhomemines.com.

It is now my pleasure to present Ivanhoe Mines' Founder and Co-Chairman, Robert Friedland.

[Robert Martin Friedland, executive]

Yes, thank you very much. Thank you to everybody on this call. It's been a very good quarter for Ivanhoe Mines, underlining the fundamental importance in mining of having a Tier 1 ore body at the bottom of the world's cost curve. It was an excellent quarter -- given primarily driven by the fact that we're using low-cost hydroelectricity to produce green copper in the Congo.

We see a number of factors that give us great optimism for the future. We invite comparison to any other competing operations anywhere in the world. So I am going to turn this over to our very, very strong operating team, Marna and David, who will take you through all the details in this. Later in the call, I'll be back to answer any questions.

Thank you very much. Marna?

[Martie Cloete, executive]

Thank you, Robert, and good afternoon, everybody from a very chilly Johannesburg. The second quarter for 2022 marked a number of significant milestones on our journey to become a major diversified mining company. This includes Kamoa-Kakula declaring commercial production of Phase 2 ahead of schedule; the completion of changeover and equipping of Shaft 1 at our Platreef project; and in June, Ivanhoe and Gecamines approved the development budget at our Kipushi project.

At Kamoa-Kakula, the ramp-up of Phase 2 continues, and it is anticipated that Kamoa-Kakula will reach combined copper production of 450,000 tonnes by the second quarter of 2023, after the completion of the debottlenecking program. With the early commissioning of Phase 2, it allowed us to tighten the lower end of our guidance and revise our production guidance upwards to between 310,000 tonnes and 340,000 tonnes of copper and concentrate for 2022.

During the ramp-up of Kamoa-Kakula, produced a record 32,877 tonnes of copper in July for an annualized production rate of 387,100 tonnes of copper. That is significant, seeing that Phase 2 only were commissioned in April.

The Phase 3 expansion is ongoing. This will increase copper production to 600,000 tonnes per annum by Q4 in 2024. This expansion will be funded from cash flows and joint venture facilities.

David Van Heerden, our CFO, will talk you through our quarterly numbers shortly, but it may be worth mentioning here that we did see an increase to our C1 cash costs during the second quarter.

Cash cost per pound of payable copper produced totals $1.42 per pound compared to $1.21 per pound and $1.28 per pound in the first quarter of 2022 and the fourth quarter of 2021, respectively. The increase mainly pertained to logistic charges. And Alex Pickard, our VP, Corporate Development, will discuss a number of initiatives currently underway to reduce these charges.

We do expect to see a slightly elevated cash cost in the third quarter, where after it should reduce in the fourth quarter once the Lualaba Copper Smelter Returns online in early September of the scheduled maintenance this coming quarter and the cost-saving initiatives start yielding results. We, therefore, reiterate our C1 cash costs guidance for Kamoa-Kakula of $1.20 to $1.40 per pound for the calendar year 2022 and expect our cash cost to be at the upper end of guidance for the year.

Environmental, social and governance remain at the heart of what we do. And in May, we proudly published our fifth annual sustainability report. In June, Ivanhoe attained membership of the United Nations Global Compact, and we remain committed to upholding the 10 principles underpinning this initiative.

We do acknowledge the importance of gender diversity and diversity in all forms, but particularly in the DRC, where female representation in the mining sector was lagging behind. We have established group-wide targets for the gender inclusion.

We are also committed to ensuring that the majority of our workforce is comprised of local employees from the footprint areas of our mines. To achieve this, we have established world-class training centers to capacitate local community employees. Acknowledging that not everyone can be employed by our mines, we also place a significant focus on enterprise and supply development, seeking to incorporate these local businesses into our supply chain and to capacitate them for sustainable business operations beyond the life of our mines.

At a time when the world is experiencing significant inflationary charges, in particular, pertaining to fields, we are fortunate that in the DRC, our investment in refurbishing existing hydropower facilities provides [indiscernible] against fuel inflation as well as enable us to attain our vision of being a green metal producer.

I will now hand over to David Van Heerden, our Chief Financial Officer, to take you through our second quarter results. Over to you, David.

[David Van Heerden, executive]

Thank you, Marna, and good day to everyone joining the call today. The second quarter of 2022 was another quarter of exceptional operational performance at the Kamoa-Kakula. However, the results were impacted by the decline in the copper price at the end of the period and inflationary pressures, both of which we will discuss a little bit in detail.

This call is, of course, just a high-level summary of our quarterly results and the presentation should be viewed in conjunction with the quarterly financial statements and MD&A for the 3 and 6 months ended June 30, 2022.

In just its fourth quarter since the commencement of commercial production, Kamoa-Kakula sold almost 86,000 tonnes of payable copper and concentrate, leading to quarterly revenue from contract receivables of $699 million before a negative remeasurement of $205 million at the period end.

As of the higher diesel prices and other factors combined with limited trucking capacity, which was worsened by the marked increase in tonnes produced by Kamoa-Kakula, resulted in an increase in cash costs. More importantly, though, Kamoa-Kakula was able to sell 1,000 tonnes in excess of payable copper produced in the quarter.

The decrease in Kamoa-Kakula's EBITDA to $286 million for the quarter was largely due to the remeasurement of sales, which I'll explain further now on the next slide, which focuses on the greater detail of Kamoa Holdings joint ventures profit.

Revenue from contract receivables booked at the average copper price during the month of sale was up to $699 million in Q2 compared to $467 million in the first quarter, with the increase driven by the good production from Phase 2. Q1 sales was remeasured at the end of March at a copper price of $4.69 while the realized copper price for Q2 was $4.34 per pound.

Furthermore, the outstanding balance of provisioning price sales were remeasured at the end of June, using a copper price of $3.79 per pound, with fees collectively resulting in a negative mark-to-market in Q2 of $205 million. Kamoa-Kakula's cost of sales for the second quarter was $217 million in total and $1.15 per pound of payable copper sold, up from $1.08 in the first quarter.

After deducting G&A, the operating profit for the second quarter for the year was $253 million and Kamoa-Kakula's EBITDA of $286 million. Kamoa Holding recorded finance cost of $66 million in Q2, which was principally the interest on the shareholder loan from Ivanhoe and Zijin, as well as interest on Kamoa-Kakula's equipment finance facilities. Deferred tax was $57 million during the quarter with a current tax expense of $5 million.

The non-controlling interest of $27 million represents the profit attributable to the DRC governance 20% interest in the Kamoa-Kakula mine complex, leaving a profit of $100 million attributable to the joint venture partners, Ivanhoe share of which equaled $50 million for Q2.

If we turn to Ivanhoe's consolidated results for the second quarter, the chart in slide deck starts with the loss in registering Ivanhoe's share of profit from the Kamoa joint venture of $50 million for the quarter. Additionally, Ivanhoe's interest income of $35 million from Kamoa Holding in the second quarter, all the shareholder loans advanced to the joint venture.

During the quarter, the company spent $10 million on the Kipushi project, $4 million on Western Foreland exploration and $4 million on general administrative expenditure. Costs incurred at the Platreef Project are deemed necessary to bring the project to commercial production and will therefore, capitalize as development costs and property plant and equipment.

The $184 million gain on the fair valuation of the financial liability in Q2 represents the change in the deemed fair value of the conversion feature attached to the $575 million, 2.5% convertible senior notes, which Ivanhoe closed in March of 2021. The conversion feature is an embedded derivative financial liability and the fair value change is principally due to the fluctuations in our share price and again, is therefore resulting from the decrease in Ivanhoe share price from the end of March to the end of June this year. Ivanhoe recognized finance cost of $10 million in Q2, relating mainly to the interest on the convertible notes and the benefit of interest rate.

With the agreement of the development plan by the shareholders of Kipushi and the approval of the development budget consistent with the Kipushi 2022 feasibility study, it was deemed probable that future taxable profit will be available from the Kipushi project, at which and it can offset its unused tax losses and unused tax credits. And we, therefore, recognize the previously unrecognized deferred tax asset in June of this year and leading to a gain of $114 million.

The aforementioned items ultimately, builds up to Ivanhoe's profit for the second quarter of $352 million.

The cash cost per pound of payable copper produced and for delivery to China was $1.42 per pound in the second quarter and up from $1.21 per pound in the first quarter of this year. And cash cost per pound of payable copper for the second quarter were higher largely due to a 42% increase in logistics charges for the transportation of Kamoa-Kakula's copper product. And as Marna mentioned, our cost reduction initiatives will be detailed a little bit later in this call.

We also saw an increase in mining costs due to the higher diesel prices as well as some other higher prices seen in consumables as well as due to the utilization of some of our surface stockpiles, which sits at a slightly higher average rate.

We have a strong balance sheet and are well positioned to support the development and growth of our projects with $507 million in cash and cash equivalents on hand and consolidated working capital of $530 million. Our liabilities of $734 million and $775 million of that relates to the 2.5% convertible notes and with these only due in 2026 with possible earlier redemption.

Our forecasted spend for 2022 is $251 million on Platreef, Kipushi and continued exploration on the Western Foreland and overheads. And all operating and capital expansion costs at Kamoa-Kakula are expected to be funded from copper sales and facilities at Kamoa. We also expect to receive the second prepayment on the Platreef streams and later this quarter, which will add a further $225 million to our cash position at that time.

I will now hand over to Alex Pickard, our Vice President, Corporate Development, and Marna to provide a brief update on the development of our project.

[Alex Pickard, executive]

Thank you, David, and good day to everybody on the line from a very warm and humid London. I'll take you through the key operational results for both Kamoa-Kakula and the Western Foreland from the second quarter.

Kamoa-Kakula had another stellar operational quarter with the biggest achievement being the very successful ramp-up of Phase 2. I think it's worth highlighting the time lines of this incredible ramp-up. We commissioned the plant on March 21, just before the end of the first quarter and by April 8, a little over 2 weeks later, we declared commercial production.

During the first month of production, in fact, the first 2 weeks of production, the Phase 2 concentrate was already regularly exceeding its design throughput and achieving close to design recoveries of 86%. This trajectory has been continued by the operations team, which you can see from the record production month of close to 32,900 tonnes of copper achieved in July. This is close to 400,000 tonnes on an annualized basis. As a result, we have raised the lower end of our production guidance from 290,000 tonnes to 310,000 tonnes and also maintained the upper end of the guidance at 340,000 tonnes, and we expect to be comfortably within this range.

The debottlenecking program at Kamoa-Kakula is also progressing well, and we expect this to be completed by the second quarter of next year, increasing the production capacity to approximately 450,000 tonnes of copper. In tandem with this, we are also working on mine optimization plans at Kakula, targeting increased mining rates to meet the expanded plant capacity of 9.2 million tonnes after the debottlenecking.

While this ramp-up in material handling capacity underground takes place at Kakula, we will be feeding some material from the stockpile, which is at a slightly lower, but still very healthy grade of 4% to 5%, and we will target getting back towards 6% copper head grade later on this year.

The exceptionally strong production ramp-up at Kamoa-Kakula did mean that we sold a much larger volume of copper products, primarily copper concentrate, but also blister-copper from our toll smelting agreement at the neighboring Lualaba Copper Smelter. The chart on the right-hand side puts this in context. We saw an increase of over 70% in terms of the absolute volume of concentrate dispatched during the quarter.

Looking more closely at these numbers, you'll see that the volume dispatched for local treatment actually decreased as the Lualaba smelter was closed for scheduled maintenance, and we do expect this to continue through the third quarter, which means in total, we will be exporting a larger volume of concentrates until that smelter is running again.

So as David and Marna both pointed out earlier, the main result of this was that we faced a significant cash cost increase in our logistics charge of roughly 42% in Q2. This is partly due to the pressure of these additional volumes on the trucking capacity as well as some issues ramping up customs clearing procedures and congestion on the DRC Zambia border, but there are also some regional factors at play here such as the interrupted port operations at Durbin caused by flooding and global increases in diesel prices.

Kamoa copper is working very closely with its offtake partners, CITIC and Zijin, as well as the DRC government to address these issues, and we already have plans in place, which include the facilitation of increased trucking capacity, helping the DRC government to improve customs clearing administration, and we are also very pleased to note that there is now a second import/export border between the DRC and Zambia opened at Sakania to add to the previous single border of Kasumbalesa, which was the bottleneck.

In terms of shipping, we are now exporting via 4 different ports on the African continent, which provides much greater flexibility with the potential to add a fifth at Lobito in Angola, where a concession was recently awarded. Finally, coming back to the big picture on costs, we expect a step change improvement once our on-site direct-to-blister smelter is commissioned, which we conservatively estimated can reduce costs by 10% to 20%.

The main impact is by significantly reducing per unit the volumes shipped by over 50%, which also includes the Phase III volumes, but as well as this, the smelter generates valuable byproducts from the sale of sulfuric acid, which commands a high price in the DRC copper belt currently.

Turning now to our Phase 3 expansion plans. We are well underway with the 5 million tonne per annum mine and concentrate expansion, which is on track for the end of 2024. The graphic on the right-hand side shows the location of the Phase 3 concentrator, which will be close to the new box cut and declines opening up the Kamoa 1 and 2 mines that are both progressing well.

In June, we placed orders for key equipment, which included ball mills, crushers, float cells and filters for the plants. For the state-of-the-art 500,000 tonne per annum direct-to-blister smelter I mentioned before, we commenced earthwork on sites in the quarter. And in June, we also placed orders for the furnaces and other long lead time equipment. So that project is also progressing very well.

All of this comes together with the works at Inga II where we signed up the EPC contract in April and work is now underway to upgrade turbine 5, which will provide a critical green source of power for all of our expansion plans. We're in the process of completing a pre-feasibility study that brings together all of these Phase 3 projects together with the optimization work we're doing at Kakula and this will provide up-to-date guidance on costs by the end of the year.

Moving on to exploration. At the Western Foreland, we were back exploring in the field during the second quarter, which followed the typical end of the rainy season. Our airborne gravity and electromagnetic surveys of the entire 2,400 square kilometer land package are nearly complete, which allows to significantly improve targeting over what is an extremely large area.

During the quarter, we've been drilling extensions to the existing discovery at Makoko, located to the west of Kakula as well as regional stratigraphic drilling in the North and far Southwest areas of the license package. But we have a lot more drilling planned for the entire season, including 50,000 meters in shallower areas and up to 45,000 meters of deeper regional drilling, so we are very excited to see what that brings.

With that update, I will now pass back to Marna to cover the other projects.

[Martie Cloete, executive]

Thank you, Alex. Just focusing on Platreef first. Following the completion of the shaft equipping and changeover, lateral development commenced in the second quarter. Our underground development is focused on the waste process on the 750, 850 and 950-meter levels with 200 meters completed on the 950-meter level. Lateral development on the 750 and 850-meter level will commence in the third and fourth quarter.

In August 2022, we completed the construction of the 26-meter concrete reach hitch to collar at a 10-meter diameter Shaft 2, which is on the critical path for the future expansion of Phase 2. We plan to continue with the construction of the 103-meter-tall headgear Shaft 2 as this will allow for optionality to bring forward the 5.2 million tonne per annum mine at Platreef.

The construction of a 5-megawatt solar plant is scheduled to commence in the third quarter with commissioning expected in 2023. Expenditure for the rest of the year equates to $129 million. And as David previously mentioned, we plan to draw the remaining $225 million of the $300 million stream facility in the third quarter, which will fund our ongoing efforts at Platreef.

And then back to the DRC. In June, Ivanhoe and Gecamines approved a development budget for Kipushi that was in line with the published feasibility study that we released earlier this year. Early works have commenced, which consists of underground preparatory work. This will enable the project to be completed on the planned time lines. Long lead orders are being prepared and preliminary construction work is underway. It is expected that financing discussions will be concluded within the next 3 months, where after full construction activities will be able to commence.

Ivanhoe is well underway on our journey to become a leading supplier of critical methods for the green energy -- clean energy transition. With our Tier 1 assets in various stages of development, we are well placed to realize our vision.

I will now hand back to Matt Keevil for today's Q&A session. Thank you.

[Matthew Keevil, executive]

[Operator Instructions] Operator, first, let's turn it over to the conference line to answer anyone that's waiting on the line with a question.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We'll take our first question from Lawson Winder, Bank of America.

[Lawson Winder, analyst]

So while it is just a hiccup and would otherwise be a fairly extraordinary ramp up for a new mine, I did want to focus on the cash cost and the cash cost guidance for 2022. Marna, you made a comment that Q3 '22 cash cost would be slightly elevated. And it would be really helpful if you could just give some clarity on whether or not you meant higher versus Q2 or just elevated versus guidance or what exactly you might mean by that, that would be very helpful.

[Martie Cloete, executive]

Thank you, Lawson. Maybe I can start, and David do feel free to jump in. I think our expectation was to trend below our existing guidance. But we do anticipate that we will trend slightly above guidance for the third quarter, just as a result of the Lualaba Copper Smelter undergoing scheduled maintenance and because the measures that we are implementing that Alex is alluding to, will take a bit of time to bear fruit.

We are speaking to custom authorities. As Alex mentioned, we're adding trucking capacity, and all of that will alleviate the pressures on our logistical charges. We also believe that fuel prices will ease off and that the shipping charges rates will come down. So we think all those will culminate in lower results during the fourth quarter, but we do expect the third quarter to be sort of in line with what we've seen in the second quarter.

[Lawson Winder, analyst]

Okay. That's very helpful. And then in terms of the logistics costs that you guys are looking to manage away, do you have a sense now at this point, what proportion can realistically be managed away and how much might persist just maybe in terms of percentages, at least until the smelter is ready to go?

[Martie Cloete, executive]

David, would you like to venture a guess?

[David Van Heerden, executive]

Yes, and I think -- and happy to jump in late. I think returning to the levels of Q1 once all the measures have been implemented, I don't think is unrealistic. And further things we are looking at doing is just looking at our trade-off of copper recoveries versus concentrate grade, again, just to see where the sweet spot is on. And that also obviously has specifically a logistics charge impact. It's just about finding that sweet spot and making sure we maximize value.

So a number of things looking into, but definitely, the Q1 levels aren't unachievable, but there are a bit of work to be done.

[Alex Pickard, executive]

Maybe if I could just add to that as well David. I mean, the African Continental logistics market is a very competitive market. And I think we do expect there to be a market-driven response where we've seen online freight rates in the past 2, 3 years have probably increased by more than 50% in terms of the actual trucking costs. But that's been as a lot more volumes have come online from Kamoa-Kakula and elsewhere. But of course, with those costs being so high, trucking operators are probably making pretty reasonable profits right now, and it will certainly draw new entrants in. And that's part of the initiative that Marna mentioned is that we're trying to facilitate new trucking operators to come in and respond to the market dynamics and bring those costs down to more normalized levels. So I think there is an opportunity from that point of view as well.

[Lawson Winder, analyst]

Okay. Also if I could just follow-up. Obviously, the smelter holds excellent potential to dramatically lower your cost and just do away with these logistics issues altogether. You're now targeting year-end 2024 for that. When you think about the path to starting that up, what are the critical path items and if there's the potential to accelerate that time line?

[Alex Pickard, executive]

Perhaps I'll take a stab at that one, Lawson. I mean the critical path item for the smelter is really the power. and so that's the work that we're doing at Inga II to bring turbine 5 online. Until we have the availability of that power from turbine 5, you wouldn't really want to ramp up a smelter in an environment where you can't guarantee a steady supply of power to that smelter. So that's really what we're kind of hanging our hat on in terms of the Q4 2024 guidance. Of course, we'll look for any way that we can to complete those works at Inga quicker, if possible, but we also don't want to be unrealistic.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We'll take our next question from Andrew Mikitchook with BMO Capital Markets.

[Andrew Mikitchook, analyst]

I just had a couple of small questions. I was wondering if we could get just some additional commentary broadly on your CapEx, call it, experience in terms of all this ordering of long lead time equipment, whether it's in line, at least generally with what was expected or budgeted and/or even availability and time line of this equipment generally across your projects since I think you've probably got a broader experience and exposure than maybe other parts of the market, and I'm sure investors would be interested in getting your sense of how that looks.

[Alex Pickard, executive]

David, do you want to take this one or should I have a first go?

[David Van Heerden, executive]

Happy to take it initially, Alex, and feel free to jump in. On our current CapEx costs, we are seeing -- we are not seeing the same inflationary pressures as seen on OpEx and consumables. But obviously, the logistics and -- logistics goes both way. So there are a little bit of an impact on deliveries, specifically for what's being purchased for Kamoa and for Kipushi. And in South Africa, because of the weakening of the South African rand, I think that's sort of played into our hands a little bit. So we are not seeing a U.S. dollar increase for our capital expenditure at the moment. So good on that front for now. But and then I'd also just like to add that the Platreef and Kipushi studies were obviously completed at the beginning of this year, so those cost estimates are still pretty current. We will, however, update the market if we feel we are moving away from our current study significantly, but not the case at present. And maybe, Alex, you can just augment on Kamoa a little bit and the pre-feasibility study, right?

[Alex Pickard, executive]

Yes. So obviously, we can't go into specifics around the numbers until we have everything together in one package. And there's, obviously a number of different elements to that, being the mine and concentrator, the smelter and the power coming together. But as you pointed out, Andrew, I mean, we did place orders during June. So we've locked in pricing for some pretty big pieces of equipment, including major components for the mill. And I think where we're sitting today, we're not particularly alarmed by the costs for any of those components. And there are signs that the market more broadly is easing. And in any case, I think we feel very confident that we have the funding in place, both from the cash flow from Kamoa-Kakula itself and the possibility to raise facilities at the Kamoa level.

[Andrew Mikitchook, analyst]

Great. David, if you're still available -- can we get you just to comment quickly on the trajectory for the repayment of the development expenses on, I guess, Phase 1 and 2? And when we would see more substantial cash taxes payable versus deferred tax?

[David Van Heerden, executive]

So Andrew, that is -- we are sort of our own worst enemy in that regard in the things that we are especially back to market, we are probably eating into our tax assets pretty quickly. So we do expect to have more substantial tax expenditure rather than deferred tax as of cash tax expenditure starting from as soon as next year.

[Andrew Mikitchook, analyst]

Okay. Well, that's in line with the previous commentary. Congratulations on a strong quarter.

[Operator]

We have no further phone questions at this time.

[Matthew Keevil, executive]

We'll move over to our web questions now. As usual, we do have some repeats, so we'll probably amalgamate a few of them and ask them to the appropriate members of management. We'll start off with one for Robert, which is a fairly popular question in our box here today.

Robert, following the recently announced bid by BHP to buy OZ Minerals, clearly, the copper M&A market is picking up a little bit here. People are interested in your take on that market and how Ivanhoe might fit in in terms of its M&A focus.

[Robert Martin Friedland, executive]

Well, copper mines don't grow on trees and we're not going to have clean air or make a meaningful impact on the climate, nor are we going to be able to act on the so-called inflation reduction bill without a massive increase in demand for copper metal. And the policy response to a recession is inherently re-inflationary. The worldwide response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine is resulting in remilitarization of the world's militaries. The Germans haven't had an army worthy of the name since World War 2. Even the Dutch are raising their defense budgets. So both on the military side and on the side of the greening of the planet, there's an astronomic demand for copper metal. The most bullish scenario is that capital markets are scared to invest, copper mines take a decade or 2 to build and very few of them can legitimately claim to be Tier 1.

The BHP did the 32% premium for us. Minerals is a case in point. One could argue whether that's actually a Tier 1 company or not in terms of its assets. But the bid was rejected and more recently, a 32% premium for Turquoise Hill in Mongolia, an asset that I know better than anyone was also rejected as being unfair by an independent committee of the directors.

So if you're a sovereign wealth fund or you're a major mining company or you're a major manufacturer or consumer of copper and you're looking for a Tier 1 asset, you can count all of the potential acquisitions on less than one of your hands, you don't need both of them. And sort of in an anaerobic environment, that's an environment without oxygen for a lot of the juniors. The pipeline is stressed, and we don't see significant copper coming into production.

The world needs to essentially double copper production to maintain 3% GDP growth over the next 22 years. Recent S&P study headed by Dan Yergin have stunning statistics that everybody should read you see, financial markets driven by computers and algorithms, but they really have their head like ostriches stuck firmly in the sand with no understanding of our industry.

I recently spent a day with senior management of one of the world's largest copper traders, and we see an incipient trend recommend in 2024, 2025, as demand for copper metal explodes and as inventories get virtually down to nothing. We also see a reduction in legal costs coming, reductions in shipping indexes coming and we see interest rates being cut in China.

So I think we're very near, at the absolute sweet spot where it would be wise to be long copper assets at this point in the cycle. We could be happier with our fundamental position as a very low producer of global warming gas. You've seen some spectacular increases in capital cost in the mining industry. But if our copper mine is 10x the grade of your copper mine, we're using 1/10 of the steel, a 1/10 of electrical energy and 1/10 of the hydrocarbon. So this is exactly what I have been telling you all about. When push comes to shove and you go through an anaerobic period in mining, that's when you want to be building. You want to be building a mine as the world is in recession. We want to be building in mine while the Chinese supply chain is looking for expansion. And actually, this is a very good time to be buying steel and fabricated items from China. In fact, a perfect sign.

So we think we have our timing right with a very, very bright future at the bottom of the world cost curve from 2024, in a situation that will last for decades. And for our kids and for our grandkids, if you want a greener world, hats off to our management team that are reinventing mining with an unprecedented amount of input from women and an unprecedented amount of benefits to the communities that host our efforts.

And in terms of exploration potential, not only in the Congo, but also in South Africa, I can assure you our teams are well in hand.

So with that, I think that's a good enough answer for your general question. And I think all of you that are listening to this call, it's very important to remember to buy on red days so that you can sell in the days during green.

[Matthew Keevil, executive]

And I think just glancing at the clock, we have time for one more. Marna, this is rather high level one for you as well.

Following the company's excellent performance building and commissioning Phase 1 and Phase 2 of Kamoa-Kakula, what knowledge and skills are you planning or have planned to transfer to ensure that Phase 3, the smelter as well as the Platreef project will also be built and commissioned on time and on budget?

[Martie Cloete, executive]

I would say success depends on people and planning and the trick is to keep it simple, try and standardize designs where possible and use to sign contractors and suppliers if they performed well. At Kamoa-Kakula, we completed a full lessons-learned review after we completed Phase 1 and 2. And we did identify some shortcomings, which we are busy sort of rectifying and also adapting our plans for the execution of Phase 3, that we plan to do the same at Platreef and at Kipushi and leverage off those lessons that we've learned at Kamoa and follow the same formula.

[Matthew Keevil, executive]

Great. And we've run up just about our hour here today. So this will conclude Ivanhoe Mines' second quarter 2022 financial results call. Thank you all again for attending today's event, and we look forward to speaking to you very soon. And again, if you have further questions that were not answered today, please do reach out to our IR team. Thanks again.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference. We appreciate your participation. You may now disconnect.