Rio Tinto Group (RIO) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Rio Tinto Group (NYSE:RIO) Q4 2022 Earnings Conference Call February 22, 2023 3:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Menno Sanderse - Head, IR

Jakob Stausholm - CEO & Executive Director

Peter Cunningham - CFO & Executive Director

Bold Baatar - Chief Executive of Copper

Conference Call Participants

Robert Brackett - Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.

Jason Fairclough - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Rahul Anand - Morgan Stanley

Myles Allsop - UBS

Glyn Lawcock - Barrenjoey Markets

Dominic O'Kane - JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Richard Hatch - Berenberg

Paul McTaggart - Citigroup

Liam Fitzpatrick - Deutsche Bank

Paul Young - Goldman Sachs Group

Tyler Broda - RBC Capital Markets

Kaan Peker - RBC Capital Markets

Lyndon Fagan - JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Amos Fletcher - Barclays Bank

Danielle Chigumira - Crédit Suisse

Alain Gabriel - Morgan Stanley

Menno Sanderse

Good morning, and good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to the presentation of Rio Tinto's 2022 financial results. Here in the room, can I please ask you to switch off your phone or at least turn it to silent? As usual, you'll hear today from Jakob and Peter, and this time hopefully from Bold as well, followed by a Q&A session. For those of you on the phone, on the web, you'll receive instructions as per usual from the operator. [Operator Instructions]. For those in the room, there is no fire alarm planned. If you hear one, please leave the room. We provide these 2 emergency doors here and follow the instructions of the fire wardens.

Having said that, please take some time to read the cautionary statements on Slide 2. Now that you have all finished speed reading, please, Jakob, the floor is yours.

Jakob Stausholm

Thank you, Menno. Good morning, and good evening. I'm really pleased to be here with you in London, and thank you for those of you joining virtually. Peter is with me, and I'm very excited that we have Bold joining us from 1.3 kilometers underground from the Oyu Tolgoi mine in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia in a moment. Before I start, I'd like to acknowledge and pay my respect to all traditional owners and First Nations people that host our operations around the world.

For me, 2022 was about building an even stronger Rio Tinto by investing in the health of our business and shaping our portfolio for the future while also delivering during the year. We achieved strong financial results with underlying earnings of $13.3 billion, free cash flow of $9 billion and a return on capital employed of 25%. We will return $8 billion to our shareholders in line with our policy, and representing the second largest ordinary dividend in our 150 years history. These results continue our track record of delivering consistently strong performance in an ever-changing world. Since 2020, we have achieved $47 billion in earnings, paying $29 billion of taxes and royalties, investing $20 billion in the business and returning $33 billion to our shareholders. Our consistently strong financial results highlights the underlying strength of the business, our world-class assets, and most of all, our great people in meeting various challenges.