BHP Published a Divestment List in 2020. Five Years On, Two of Three Delivered.

Copper was 23% of BHP's earnings in FY21. In FY26, it was 54%.

Iron ore went the other way: from 70% down to 43%.

There is a way to test whether that was a plan or a price move. In August 2020, BHP published a list: divest BHP Mitsui Coal, NSW Energy Coal and Cerrejón. Five years is long enough to mark it.

Cerrejón went to Glencore on 11 January 2022 for US$294 million. BHP Mitsui Coal went to Stanmore on 3 May 2022. NSW Energy Coal did not sell. BHP ran a trade sale, stated publicly that it produced no viable offer, and moved to a managed cessation of mining by the end of FY30 instead.

Two delivered. One failed, and was disclosed as failed.

Petroleum merged into Woodside on 1 June 2022 and went to shareholders as an in specie dividend of US$3.86 a share, US$19.6 billion. Then the buying. OZ Minerals was acquired outright on 2 May 2023 for US$5.9 billion net cash, and it brought three things.

Prominent Hill and Carrapateena were kept and now make up most of Copper SA. The Brazilian Carajás hub was sold to CoreX this April for up to US$465 million. West Musgrave was suspended at 30% complete.

This leads to the part that did not work. Western Australia Nickel went into suspension in October 2024 when the market turned, and BHP is spending around A$450 million a year to keep a restart possible, with no review due until February 2027. That was a reaction, not a plan. Jansen has not produced a tonne, sits 84 per cent complete on Stage 1, and carried a US$2.3 billion impairment this year.

Group copper production still rose 19% across the window, 1,636 kt to 1,953 kt.

Read forward through the filings rather than backwards through a strategy deck, and that is what execution looks like. Mining is full of five-year plans that get quietly restated at the third investor day, and the restatement never gets its own announcement. This one has a scorecard, because the list was published first and reported against afterwards, including the items that failed.

Most of the industry's effort focuses on whether a strategy is right. Almost none goes on whether a company is capable of finishing one, which is the more predictive question and the one the filings have already answered.

That entire record belongs to one chief executive. Mike Henry stepped down on 30 June. Whether the follow-through is the company or the person is what is worth watching.

Less searching. More strategising.™