Key performance indicators

The health, safety and wellbeing of our employees and contractors is at the heart of everything we do.

We are committed to a safe work environment by focusing on eliminating fatalities, preventing catastrophic events, and reducing injuries. To support this, we continue to implement and embed key programs, including our safety maturity model (SMM), critical risk management (CRM), and the Safe Production System (SPS) - all of which help us to build a physically and psychologically safe and healthy workplace, built on trust, transparency and collaboration.

We also continue to share lessons and strengthen our partnerships with industry and associated committees, contracting partners and local communities to improve health, safety and wellbeing outcomes.

Our portfolio of low-cost, long-life assets delivers attractive returns throughout the cycle and has been reshaped significantly in recent years. Underlying ROCE measures how efficiently we generate profits from investment in our portfolio of assets.

Underlying ROCE decreased by 2 percentage points to 18% in 2024, reflecting a decrease in underlying earnings, principally due to lower iron ore prices, combined with an increase in operating assets due to capital expenditure on key growth projects and maintaining our operating capacity.

We remain focused on delivering our strategy to generate attractive shareholder returns over the long term as we diversify our growing business and invest with confidence in the long-term demand for materials crucial to the global energy transition.

These financial KPIs measure how well we are managing costs, increasing productivity and generating the most revenue from each of our assets.

Underlying earnings of $10.9 billion were $0.9 billion lower than in 2023. Underlying EBITDA of $23.3 billion was $0.6 billion lower than in 2023. The 2% decrease in underlying EBITDA was primarily due to lower iron ore prices, partly offset by higher prices for copper and aluminium, higher copper volumes and lower market-linked costs.

We remain disciplined and focused on managing costs across our portfolio as we continue to generate consistent margins and maintain attractive shareholder returns.

This KPI measures our ability to convert underlying earnings into cash.

Net cash generated from operating activities of $15.6 billion was 3% higher than 2023. This was driven by improved working capital management and higher dividends from Escondida, partly offset by the impact of a lower iron ore price.

We remain focused on our consistent cash flow generation as we execute our strategy to deliver organic growth through our major projects, while continuing to drive for efficiencies across our existing assets.

This KPI measures the net cash returned by the business after the expenditure of sustaining and growth capital. This cash can be used for shareholder returns, reducing debt and other investment.

Free cash flow decreased by $2.1 billion to $5.6 billion in 2024, primarily due to increased capital expenditure as we ramp up several major growth projects, slightly offset by increased net cash generated from operating activities.

We remain focused on our consistent cash flow generation as we execute our strategy to deliver organic growth through our major projects, while continuing to drive for efficiencies across our existing assets.

Climate risks and opportunities have formed part of our strategic thinking and investment decisions for over 2 decades. The low-carbon transition is at the heart of our business strategy. We focus on growing production in the materials that enable the transition, decarbonising our operations and partnering with our customers and suppliers to decarbonise our value chains.

Our adjusted gross Scope 1 and 2 emissions were 30.7Mt CO₂e in 2024, which is 14% below our 2018 baseline of 35.7Mt CO₂e. In 2024 we made significant progress and reduced our emissions by 3.2Mt CO₂e.

This has primarily been achieved by new renewable energy contracts, including the limited use of unbundled renewable energy certificates in locations where new generating assets are under development or where power purchase agreements have been agreed.

In addition we have made commitments to projects that are expected to deliver abatement of around 3.6Mt per year in future periods mostly through renewable electricity and biofuels. In addition, imminent investment decisions could deliver further abatement by 2030 and include new energy solutions at BSL and fuel-switching and electrification in the Queensland Alumina Limited (QAL) and Yarwun alumina refineries.

Our sustained performance and growth rely on having workforce diversity that is representative of the communities in which we operate and having a workplace where people are valued for who they are and encouraged to contribute to their full potential.

The representation of women at Rio Tinto increased from 24.3% in 2023 to 25.2% in 2024, which is short of our target of 25.8%. We saw improvements across all levels of the organisation, with senior leaders increasing from 30.1% to 32.0%, and operations and general support increasing from 17.7% to 18.9%.

Our target to increase the proportion of women in our workforce year-on-year gives us continued focus on both the attractiveness of Rio Tinto to women and the environment they work in.

We continue to work to strengthen our applicant pipeline of women by partnering with external sector groups and local technical colleges, universities and communities, and building awareness of both Rio Tinto and the mining sector to encourage more women to apply for vacant roles and join us. We are working to more deeply understand the drivers of attrition of women across the organisation.