Teck Resources (TECK) Q1 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

All participants, thank you for standing by. Welcome to Teck's First Quarter 2022 Earnings Release Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. This conference call is being recorded on Wednesday, April 27, 2022.

I would now like to turn the conference call over to Fraser Phillips, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Strategic Analysis. Please go ahead.

Fraser Phillips

Thanks very much, Patrick. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for Teck's first quarter 2022 results conference call. Please note today's call contains forward-looking statements. Various risks and uncertainties may cause actual results to vary. Teck does not assume the obligation to update any forward-looking statements. Please refer to Slide 2 for the assumptions underlying our forward-looking statements. In addition, we will reference various non-GAAP measures throughout this call. Explanations and reconciliations regarding these measures could be found in our MD&A the latest press release on our website.

Don Lindsay, our President and CEO, will begin today's call with first quarter highlights, followed by Jonathan Price, our CFO, who will provide additional color on our financial results. We will conclude today's session with a question-and-answer period to address any remaining questions.

With that, I will turn the call over to Don.

Don Lindsay

Thank you, Fraser, and good morning, everyone. We are pleased to report an exceptional start to the year and our record-setting financial results in the first quarter and what is going to be a transformational year for all of us here at Teck. Solid operational performance and continued strong commodity prices drove a quarterly record of $3 billion in adjusted EBITDA, which is more than triple the same period last year. We delivered adjusted diluted earnings of $2.96 per share compared to $0.61 in Q1 of 2021. And importantly, our strong financial performance enabled us to both strengthen our balance sheet and return significant cash to shareholders.

We continue to advance our flagship QB2 copper project with overall progress now surpassing 82% completion. We have to say we're very proud of this achievement, especially in light of the significant impact the Omicron wave had on workforce absenteeism, which exceeded 20% early in the quarter.

Our QB2 capital cost guidance remains unchanged, and our teams are focused on systems completion and handover as we expect first copper from line 1 in Q4 of this year, assuming no further COVID waves or other major disruptions. During the quarter, we made meaningful progress towards our commitment to safety and sustainability leadership. On safety, our high potential injury frequency remained low at 0.14 in the quarter. On climate, as you will have seen, we expanded our climate action strategy building on our existing commitment to net 0 across our operations by 2050, we included a new short-term goal to achieve net 0 scope to GHG emissions by 2025. And we also have an ambition to achieve net 0 Scope 3 emissions by 2050. We are pleased to see our continued sustainability efforts being recognized by the industry. And during the quarter, we were named to the 2022 Bloomberg Gender Equality Index and recognition of a high level of disclosure and performance in gender quality and Highland Valley was the first Canadian mine site to be awarded the Copper Mark verification for its responsible mining practices.