There’s nothing like finishing the year on a note that’s more festive than a Downing Street Christmas gathering, and this time it’s Mark Cutifani who’s sticking on the red fat suit and the large white beard and letting rip with a lusty "Ho! Ho! Ho!"
If you’re an Anglo American shareholder, it doesn’t matter two hoots how naughty or nice you may have been, you’re still getting the same dividend and, judging by the performance-guidance the company has issued, it’s likely to be a whopper.
It’s talking about 35% growth over the next decade at a distinctly healthy 50% margin, driven by technology and innovation improvements, stronger operational performance and a number of growth projects coming on track. Its projects are focused on high-quality, low-cost assets, such as its Peruvian copper project Quellaveco, which remains on time and on budget and is scheduled to be delivered in 2022 despite operational challenges caused by the pandemic.
Its discovery portfolio is sniffing out future-enabling metals and minerals such as copper, nickel and platinum group metals, which is a crowded space to play in because every other miner worth its salt is doing the same, but Cutifani points out that climate change is the defining challenge of our time and Anglo’s role is to support the transition to a low-carbon economy by producing many of the metals and minerals that make decarbonised energy and transport possible.
That may well be the most Greta-friendly statement ever uttered by a CEO of Anglo, but it doesn’t stop him from making a tidy profit.
SpaceX: Things fall apart, rapidly
Anybody queuing up to join Elon Musk on a one-way trip to colonise Mars might do well to acquaint themselves with the concept of the RUD. This is the acronym for "rapid unplanned disassembly", something that has become all too common when attempting to land SpaceX’s giant Starship rocket, and can be roughly translated as "hits the deck then blows up in a massive ball of flames".
You might also pause to consider the feeling you’d get when you found yourself on the red planet and realised you were stuck there with Musk, but that’s another issue.
SpaceX has achieved incredible things since its first rocket blew up in 2006, particularly the dozens of successful launches of its Falcon 9 rocket, which is able to return to Earth for reuse. It has slashed the price of a launch and is now widely used by Nasa.
The company is planning to spend $20bn-$30bn on its Starlink Constellation, a network of satellites intended to offer global internet coverage, but all this is dependent on the Starship rather than the Falcon 9.
The Starship is the biggest rocket ever launched into orbit, with a payload of 100,000kg vs the Falcon’s 63,800kg. The problem is with the Starship’s Raptor engines, which are the first to run on methane, and pose more than a few engineering challenges.
Musk cancelled the Thanksgiving holiday for his staff, describing the situation as a disaster and saying there was a genuine risk of the company heading into bankruptcy next year if they can’t get it fixed sharpish.
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