![\"Molten](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/0e7b69bb5ee14935f72dc66798c719ed.jpeg\")
Molten copper at a Glencore refinery in Montreal, Canada (ANDREJ IVANOV) \u00b7 ANDREJ IVANOV\/AFP\/AFP <\/p>\n Molten copper at a Glencore refinery in Montreal, Canada (ANDREJ IVANOV) \u00b7 ANDREJ IVANOV\/AFP\/AFP <\/p>\n
Swiss resources giant Glencore is still open to a transformative merger with another mining group, its CEO said Wednesday, two weeks after dropping a plan to combine with British-Australian miner Rio Tinto.<\/p>\n
“If another opportunity comes for us where we can create a big, mega, major miner on the right conditions for our shareholders, we would look at that,” Gary Nagle said during a conference call after presenting Glencore’s 2025 earnings.<\/p>\n
The proposed deal with Rio would have created the world’s biggest mining firm, a behemoth valued at $260 billion poised to capitalise on surging demand for copper and iron as well as rare earths critical in high-tech industries.<\/p>\n
But when announcing the end of merger talks this month, Glencore said the terms offered by Rio “significantly undervalued Glencore’s underlying relative value”.<\/p>\n
“We just couldn’t reach agreement on value and that’s fine — We look after our shareholders, they look after their shareholders,” Nagle said Wednesday.<\/p>\n
“This is not a deal that we had to do,” he added, but rather “a deal that… we would have liked to do at the time,” he said.<\/p>\n
His comments came as Glencore announced a return to full-year profits, which reached $363 million after a loss of $1.6 billion in 2024.<\/p>\n
In a statement Nagle called it a “a year of significant progress” and said the company would focus on “successfully progressing our organic production growth options”.<\/p>\n
In particular Glencore will step up copper production amid a surge in prices fuelled by AI-fuelled demand for massive data centres, and the shift toward clean energy technologies.<\/p>\n
Annual copper production should reach one million tonnes by the end of 2028, Glencore said, before rising to around 1.6 million tonnes by 2035.<\/p>\n
On top of a 2025 dividend payout of $0.10 per share, Glencore will also recommend an exceptional payout of $0.07 based on last year’s return to profit.<\/p>\n
“For many, many decades ahead, the business case for Glencore, a cash generative, returns to shareholder business, is incredibly strong,” Nagle said during the call.<\/p>\n
Analysts at UK investment firm Hargreaves Lansdown said Glencore would likely find willing partners to help fund its copper production targets, requiring investments estimated at $23 billion.<\/p>\n
“Glencore’s ability to go it alone is not in question. Debt levels are manageable and it generates around $4bn of free cash flow every year,” the analysts said in a research note.<\/p>\n
“But the consolidation theme is unlikely to go away.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Molten copper at a Glencore refinery in Montreal, Canada (ANDREJ IVANOV) \u00b7 ANDREJ IVANOV\/AFP\/AFP Swiss resources giant Glencore…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17644,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123],"tags":[12139,8739,132,12140,1084],"class_list":{"0":"post-17643","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-glencore","8":"tag-copper-production","9":"tag-gary-nagle","10":"tag-glencore","11":"tag-molten-copper","12":"tag-rio-tinto"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17643\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}