Rio Tinto Group (NYSE:RIO) 2023Full Year Results Earnings Conference Call February 21, 2024 3:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Menno Sanderse – Investor Relations

Jakob Stausholm – Chief Executive Officer

Peter Cunningham – Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Richard Hatch – Berenberg

Paul Young – Goldman Sachs

Kaan Peker – RBC

Jason Fairclough – Bank of America

Bob Brackett – Bernstein

Rahul Anand – Morgan Stanley

Lyndon Fagan – JPMorgan

Alain Gabriel – Morgan Stanley

Chris LaFemina – Jefferies

Lachlan Shaw – UBS

Robert Stein – Macquarie

Grant Sporre – Bloomberg Intelligence

Liam Fitzpatrick – Deutsche Bank

Glyn Lawcock – Barrenjoey

Myles Allsop – UBS

Matt Greene – Goldman Sachs

Alex Pearce – BMO Capital Market

Menno Sanderse

Great. Hello, everybody, and welcome to Rio Tinto's 2023 Results Meeting. As usual, a couple of housekeeping items before we start proceedings. Can I please ask you to put your mobile phones to silent or turn them off? And secondly, for those here in the room today, there is no fire drill planned. If you hear a fire alarm, please leave either fire doors at the back or the front and follow the instructions of the fire marshals. Jakob and Peter will present the key items of the results and the forward-looking items for about 30 minutes, and then we'll have 45 minutes for Q&A. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up during that Q&A session. Jakob, over to you.

Jakob Stausholm

Yes, thank you, Meno, and good morning, good evening to everyone. Thank you for joining us. The 23rd of January was the saddest day of my five years, five and a half years at Rio Tinto. On that day, a chartered plane crashed near Fort Smith in Canada. We lost four colleagues from our Diavik mine and two airline crew members. We are completely devastated. When I went to Diavik and Fort Smith, I saw how heartbreaking this tragedy is for the loved ones, our team and the whole community. Our focus is on supporting everyone who has been affected as the authorities continue to investigate what has happened. A tragedy like this puts everything into perspective. It's a horrific reminder that nothing, absolutely nothing, is more important than safety. Safety continues to be our top priority, our work to evolve our culture and processes to ensure everyone everywhere goes home safely every day is never done. So allow me a moment of reflection. Thank you. I also wanted to acknowledge and pay my respect to all traditional owners and First Nations that host our operations around the world.