Monsters of Rock: MinRes cops a strike, BHP pulls back curtain on Chile copper plans

MinRes cops first strike at AGM
BHP reveals plans for multi-billion dollar spend at Chile copper mines
Lithium stocks drop but IperionX, WA1 and Spartan run hot

Monsters of Rock drills deeper into the ASX’s large cap mining stocks with mining scribe Josh Chiat.

There’s nowhere else to look in the world of large cap resources outside Mineral Resources (ASX:MIN) this week, whose month of mayhem ended with a first strike at its AGM.

A strike is when at least 25% of shares in a company are voted at an ASX firm’s annual general meeting to reject the remuneration report, the schedule of payments and incentives the company intends to issue over the next year to its board and senior management.

It’s largely ceremonial. Since the vote is only advisory a strike is, effectively, a slap on the wrist from shareholders.

But a second strike a year later enables shareholders to vote to spill the company’s whole board. Pretty much never happens, but the embarrassment generally forces a company to change tack in its communications with investors and remuneration strategy.

In MinRes’ case the large vote against the rem report was a protest against its board’s failure to reveal, until leaked in the media, a series of undisclosed payments to related parties and use of company funds by its founder, major shareholder and MD Chris Ellison.

Perth billionaire Ellison has already announced his intention to step down over the next 12-18 months and make way for a successor, having effectively shooed away questions about succession plans at last year’s shareholder shindig.

Of course, many shareholders willing to forgive his indiscretions thanks to the enormous wealth created by the mining services, lithium and iron ore play since listing in 2006, were eager to call on Ellison to stick around, at least in an advisory capacity.

It seems untenable, with ASIC reported to be looking into some of the non-disclosures made public through the media and first brought to the MinRes board’s attention in 2022 when someone blew the whistle.

Ellison, for his part, used the AGM to apologise for his mistakes, which included a personal tax evasion matter now settled with the ATO and a rental arrangement with a property part-owned by Ellison that received over $32 million for rent from MinRes over almost 20 years.

“I can’t stress enough how much I hate what I’ve done and what is a dark cloud in my life that I will live with forever,” he told shareholders and attendees at MinRes Park in Perth.

“But regardless, I want everyone to know I deeply regret that error and judgment that I made back there.”

Untying the knot

The properties have now been offered on market, MinRes chair James McClements, who will also step down ahead of the company’s 2025 AGM, said.

McClements also flagged the unwinding of business relationships unless there is a strong business reason to maintain them, including with a trust partly owned by Ellison, a shipping agency owned by his daughter and a mining services company majority owned by MinRes and managed by his brother.

What of the market in which MinRes plays? They remain bullish on the new Onslow Iron project and batted away questions about the stability of the balance sheet, helped in part by a $1.3bn sale of a 49% stake in the miner’s haul road and $1.13bn to be pocketed from the sale of most of MinRes’ gas assets to Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Energy.

Hammered by a downturn in lithium prices, which prompted the closure of the Bald Hill mine last week, MinRes has cut hundreds of office staff and moved other remote workers to less attractive rosters. But Ellison, who didn’t take questions from shareholders or hold his typical press conference, said he had seen a number of downturns and that miners tend to “come out stronger” on the other side.

BHP goes big copper in Chile

Having already let investors in on its plans to turn South Australia into an eventual 650,000tpa copper-producing province by ~2035, the world’s biggest miner has set in motion a US$12.5 billion plan to expand its Chilean copper portfolio.

That would include US$9.1bn at Escondida, where production is expected to decline from 1.18-1.3Mt at costs of US$1.30-1.60/lb this year to medium term levels of 900,000-1Mt at US$1.50-1.80/lb and then lower again from FY27.

BHP has been managing declining grades over time at the 57.5%-owned mine, which also includes Rio Tinto (30%) and Japanese investors among its stewards.

At some point between 2029 and 2031 it plans to decommission the 1990s vintage Los Colorados plant, opening access to high-grade copper ore beneath the mill.

The introduction of a replacement concentrator is expected to cost US$4.4-5.9bn and deliver 220,000-260,000tpa of additional output.

That would help the Chilean portfolio, which also includes the Pampa Norte project where BHP could restart the shuttered Cerro Colorado plant from CY31-32, average 1.4Mtpa through the 2030s.

That would recover rates close to the 1.5Mt average anticipated over FY25-26 and above the 1.2Mt average expected from FY27-30, with the projects boasting an indicative IRR of 15-19% and capital intensity of US$19,000-26,000/t copper equivalent.

It could all cost as much as ~US$15bn at the top end of capital estimates, with Goldman Sachs’ Paul Young saying along with Jansen Potash, Samarco remediation provisions, Copper SA and the Vicuna developments in Argentina, it could push BHP’s net debt beyond its US$15bn ceiling by the end of the decade.

Goldman remains ‘buy’ rated with a $47.30 price target on BHP, but likes Rio more when it comes to copper growth and future free cash flow generation.

“We continue to believe that BHP’s major opportunity is growing copper production in Chile at Escondida and Spence, and growing production and capturing synergies in South Australia between Olympic Dam and the previous OZL assets,” Young told clients after the site visit.

“We think BHP has a competitive edge in copper heap leaching and believe it can potentially fill ~200ktpa of spare cathode capacity by 2030 and possibly the full ~315ktpa spare capacity by 2035.

“An expansion of Escondida and growth in South Australia could boost BHP’s copper production by ~10% to ~2Mtpa by the end of the decade.

“However, we forecast copper production to decline over FY27-29 mostly driven by lower grades at Escondida. As a result, BHP is growing group production by just 0.7% pa through 2023-2030E in CuEq terms (0.4% from 2023-2035), half the rate of key peer RIO at ~3%.”

The ASX 300 Metals and Mining index lifted 2.4% over the past week.

Which ASX 300 Resources stocks have impressed and depressed?

Making gains 🚀

IperionX (ASX:IPX) (titanium) +18.9%

WA1 Resources (ASX:WA1) (niobium) +18.4%

Spartan Resources (ASX:SPR) (gold) +16.2%

Alcoa Corporation (ASX:AAI) (alumina) +13.7%

Eating losses 😭

Wildcat Resources (ASX:WC8) (lithium) -19.1%

Patriot Battery Metals (ASX:PMT) (lithium) -14.3%

Pilbara Minerals (ASX:PLS) (lithium) -13.8%

Latin Resources (ASX:LRS) (lithium) -10.7%

IperionX has been continuing to rise as it moves towards producing titanium metal powder from a Virginia-based plant that is under commissioning in the USA.

Morningstar thinks lithium stocks are too cheap. But that hasn’t stopped a new wave of pessimism sending prices tumbling for producers and explorers dabbling in the battery metal.