Equal
…
…
ROE = tax × interest × margin × turnover × leverage
| FY2021 | FY2022 | FY2023 | FY2024 | FY2025 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tax burdendriver | 0.76x | 0.74x | 0.92x | 0.98x | 2.16x |
| Interest burden | 0.99x | 0.99x | 0.98x | 0.95x | 0.92x |
| Operating margin | 23.2% | 23.1% | 24.8% | 6.5% | 3.9% |
| Asset turnover | 0.39x | 0.44x | 0.42x | 0.30x | 0.30x |
| Leverage (equity mult.) | 1.15x | 1.13x | 1.14x | 1.16x | 1.21x |
| = Return on Equity (consolidated) | 7.7% | 8.5% | 10.7% | 2.1% | 2.7% |
| Return on Invested Capital (ROIC) | 7.8% | 8.6% | 10.9% | 2.2% | 1.4% |
Consolidated (pre-minority-interest) basis; the headline ROE in the ratio grid is owners’ basis.
| FY2021 | FY2022 | FY2023 | FY2024 | FY2025 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Current Ratio(Current Assets / Current Liabilities) | 4.97x | 5.65x | 4.77x | 3.81x | 2.07x |
| Quick Ratio((Current Assets − Inventory) / Current Liabilities) | 4.00x | 4.76x | 4.05x | 3.25x | 1.54x |
| Cash Ratio(Cash / Current Liabilities) | 3.02x | 3.62x | 3.22x | 2.56x | 1.04x |
| Working Capital(Current Assets − Current Liabilities) | $ 668 M | $ 815 M | $ 816 M | $ 741 M | $ 387 M |
| FY2021 | FY2022 | FY2023 | FY2024 | FY2025 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Debt to Equity (DER)(Total Debt / Total Equity) | 0.00x | 0.00x | 0.00x | 0.00x | 0.00x |
| Liabilities to Equity(Total Liabilities / Total Equity) | 0.15x | 0.13x | 0.14x | 0.16x | 0.21x |
| Debt to Assets(Total Debt / Total Assets) | 0.00x | 0.00x | 0.00x | 0.00x | 0.00x |
| Net Debt(Total Debt − Cash) | -$ 504 M | -$ 628 M | -$ 690 M | -$ 667 M | -$ 373 M |
| Interest Coverage(EBIT / Interest Expense) | 80.12x | 71.44x | 43.92x | 18.58x | 12.04x |
| Equity Multiplier (Assets ÷ Equity) | 1.15x | 1.13x | 1.14x | 1.16x | 1.21x |
| FY2021 | FY2022 | FY2023 | FY2024 | FY2025 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gross Margin(Gross Profit / Revenue) | 26.1% | 26.6% | 28.2% | 11.4% | 11.2% |
| Operating Margin(EBIT / Revenue) | 23.2% | 23.1% | 24.8% | 6.5% | 3.9% |
| Net Margin(Net Income / Revenue) | 17.4% | 17.0% | 22.3% | 6.1% | 7.7% |
| EBITDA(EBIT + D&A) | $ 377 M | $ 436 M | $ 474 M | $ 222 M | $ 202 M |
| EBITDA Margin(EBITDA / Revenue) | 39.5% | 36.9% | 38.5% | 23.3% | 20.4% |
| Return on Assets (ROA)(Net Income / Total Assets) | 6.7% | 7.5% | 9.4% | 1.8% | 2.3% |
| Return on Equity (ROE)(Net Income (Owners) / Equity (Owners)) | 7.7% | 8.5% | 10.7% | 2.1% | 2.7% |
| Tax Burden (Net ÷ Pretax) | 0.76x | 0.74x | 0.92x | 0.98x | 2.16x |
| Interest Burden (Pretax ÷ EBIT) | 0.99x | 0.99x | 0.98x | 0.95x | 0.92x |
| Return on Invested Capital (ROIC) | 7.8% | 8.6% | 10.9% | 2.2% | 1.4% |
| Turnover | FY2021 | FY2022 | FY2023 | FY2024 | FY2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Asset Turnover(Revenue / Total Assets) | 0.39x | 0.44x | 0.42x | 0.30x | 0.30x |
| Inventory Turnover(COGS / Inventory) | 4.35x | 5.56x | 5.68x | 5.67x | 4.58x |
| Receivables Turnover(Revenue / Receivables) | 9.35x | 8.34x | 12.10x | 11.26x | 13.43x |
| Payables Turnover(COGS / Payables) | 5.76x | 7.49x | 6.29x | 4.93x | 4.31x |
| Conversion Period | FY2021 | FY2022 | FY2023 | FY2024 | FY2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Days Inventory Outstanding (DIO)(365 × Inventory / COGS) | 84.0 days | 65.7 days | 64.3 days | 64.4 days | 79.7 days |
| Days Sales Outstanding (DSO)(365 × Receivables / Revenue) | 39.1 days | 43.8 days | 30.2 days | 32.4 days | 27.2 days |
| Days Payable Outstanding (DPO)(365 × Payables / COGS) | 63.4 days | 48.7 days | 58.1 days | 74.0 days | 84.6 days |
| Cash Conversion Cycle (CCC)(DIO + DSO − DPO) | 59.7 days | 60.7 days | 36.4 days | 22.8 days | 22.3 days |
| FY2021 | FY2022 | FY2023 | FY2024 | FY2025 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free Cash Flow(Operating Cash Flow − Capex) | $ 154 M | $ 129 M | $ 135 M | -$ 125 M | -$ 251 M |
Price Rp 5,275 · market cap Rp 56 T ($ 3.1 B at the cited rate; statements are filed in USD)
| Multiple | INCO | Peer median | vs median |
|---|---|---|---|
| P/E | 40.48x | 16.25x(15/16) | +149% |
| P/B | 1.11x | 1.68x | -34% |
| P/S | 3.11x | 1.92x | +62% |
| EV/EBITDA | 13.37x | 10.31x | +30% |
| EV/EBIT | 70.35x | 14.25x | +394% |
| EV/Sales | 2.73x | 2.27x | +20% |
| FCF Yield | -8.16% | 0.01% | -77,560% |
| Dividend Yield | 1.48% | 5.27%(11/16) | -72% |
EV = mkt cap $ 3.1 B + debt $ 3.5 M − cash $ 376 M = $ 2.7 B
not computable: negative or zero base-year FCF. Shown as-is rather than estimated.
Reverse DCF: single-stage FCF, terminal growth 2.5%, discount band 9.3–13.3% (β=1; build cited in Methodology). Not a forecast.
This model projects the operating cash the whole business generates, discounts it back at the blended cost of capital, and subtracts net debt. What remains is the equity value, stated per share. Every input below comes from the company's own audited record or from cited market data, and you can adjust each one yourself.
Cyclical normalization: Commodity/cyclical name: the trailing years are a sample drawn from the price cycle, not a trend. Defaults are therefore normalized, using the full-window mean margin with no cycle-position growth extrapolation. That normalized margin is itself the embedded commodity-price assumption.
Base year contains named one-off item(s): FY2025: Net income above EBIT: a non-operating contribution not identified in the seeded statements. The EBIT basis screens out most non-operating items, but read the Earnings Quality section before trusting the base margin.
| Assumption | Value | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Rf (risk-free) | 4.66% | US 10Y Treasury, 30 Jul 2026 |
| ERP (Rm − Rf) | 6.69% | Damodaran Indonesia, Jul 2026 (Baa2, CRP 2.46%) |
| β | 0.96 → 0.96 | Metals & Mining (unlevered) relevered at own D/E 0.00 |
| Cost of equity | 11.09% | Rf + β × ERP |
| Cost of debt | 6.68% | median interest coverage 43.9x (EBIT ÷ interest, FY2021–FY2025) implies a Aaa/AAA synthetic rating and a 0.40% default spread, over a 6.28% base (US 10Y 4.66% + Indonesia's 1.62% sovereign spread). Its BOOK rate is 91.8%, which is what past debt actually costs; the gap is legacy or subsidised borrowing, not the rate on new debt. Spread table: A. Damodaran, Ratings, Interest Coverage Ratios and Default Spread, January 2026 data update (large non-financial service firms) |
| Tax rate | 16.0% | median effective rate, FY2021–FY2025 (pretax ≈ EBIT − interest) |
| WACC | 11.08% | 100% E × CoE + 0% D × Kd × (1 − t) |
| Revenue growth (yr 1, fading) | 2.5% | terminal growth from year 1, cyclical normalization: the delivered 4-yr CAGR (1.0%) reflects cycle position, not a trend |
| EBIT margin | 16.3% | full-cycle mean EBIT margin, FY2021–FY2025 (cyclical normalization: this margin is the embedded commodity-price assumption) |
| D&A / revenue | 15.7% | mean D&A/revenue, last 3 FYs |
| Capex / revenue | 35.7% | mean capex/revenue, last 3 FYs, for the explicit years. The terminal year instead FUNDS ITS OWN GROWTH: in stable growth g = reinvestment rate x return on capital, and returns are assumed to converge to the 11.1% cost of capital, so the perpetuity reinvests 22.6% of NOPAT and terminal capex is 18.6% of revenue against depreciation of 15.7%. Both simpler rules are wrong in opposite directions: holding the historical ratio charges a build phase in perpetuity, while setting capex equal to depreciation hands the company 2.5% growth forever for no new capital. Because returns converge to the cost of capital, terminal growth here is value-neutral |
| ΔNWC / Δrevenue | 8.5% | median ΔNWC/Δrevenue across the seeded years (NWC = AR + inventory − AP) |
| Terminal growth | 2.5% | BI inflation-target midpoint (2.5% ± 1%) |
Each default is the company's own historical average, which describes the phase it happened to be in. Switch a driver to Per-year when that phase is ending: a company mid-build does not spend at its peak rate forever, and one in a capex pause does not stay there. The terminal year keeps its own ratios, so a taper you enter here changes the explicit window and leaves the perpetuity coherent.
| Year | +1 | +2 | +3 | +4 | +5 | T∞ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Growth | 2.5% | 2.5% | 2.5% | 2.5% | 2.5% | 2.5% |
| Revenue | $ 1.0 B | $ 1.0 B | $ 1.1 B | $ 1.1 B | $ 1.1 B | $ 1.1 B |
| EBIT | $ 165 M | $ 170 M | $ 174 M | $ 178 M | $ 183 M | $ 187 M |
| NOPAT | $ 139 M | $ 142 M | $ 146 M | $ 150 M | $ 153 M | $ 157 M |
| + D&A | $ 159 M | $ 163 M | $ 167 M | $ 171 M | $ 176 M | $ 180 M |
| − Capex | $ 363 M | $ 372 M | $ 381 M | $ 391 M | $ 400 M | $ 213 M |
| − ΔNWC | $ 2.1 M | $ 2.2 M | $ 2.2 M | $ 2.3 M | $ 2.3 M | $ 2.4 M |
| FCFF | -$ 67 M | -$ 69 M | -$ 70 M | -$ 72 M | -$ 74 M | $ 122 M |
| PV | -$ 60 M | -$ 56 M | -$ 51 M | -$ 47 M | -$ 44 M | $ 839 M |
Check it yourself: revenue × margin = EBIT · NOPAT = EBIT × (1 − tax) · FCFF = NOPAT + D&A − Capex − ΔNWC · PV = FCFF ÷ (1+WACC)^yr · TV = FCFF(T∞) ÷ (WACC − g), discounted from year 5 · equity = EV − net debt − minority · per share = equity ÷ shares outstanding
EV = PV(explicit) -$ 258 M + PV(TV) $ 839 M = $ 581 M · TV 144% of EV · − net debt -$ 373 M − minority $ 0 = equity $ 954 M ÷ shares outstanding · per share is in USD, shown in IDR at 18,058
Model output: Rp 1,634/share (-69% vs price Rp 5,275)· exit-multiple check (10.3x): Rp 3,938
Under these assumptions the model lands 69% below today's price. The market, in other words, is paying for faster growth, a fatter margin, or a lower discount rate than the inputs here assume.
| g \ WACC | 10.1% | 11.1% | 12.1% |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2.0% | 1,764 | 1,540 | 1,365 |
| 2.5% | 1,887 | 1,634 | 1,439 |
| 3.0% | 2,028 | 1,740 | 1,521 |
Model output under the stated assumptions. Every input above comes from the company's own audited record or from cited market data, and every one can be adjusted. This is not a price target and not advice.
Educational analysis. Multiples pair today’s price with the latest audited fiscal year (trailing-FY convention); peer figures are the covered peer sample, not the whole market. Never a price target.
| FY2021 | FY2022 | FY2023 | FY2024 | FY2025 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $ 953 M | $ 1.2 B | $ 1.2 B | $ 950 M | $ 990 M |
| Cost of Goods Sold | $ 704 M | $ 866 M | $ 885 M | $ 842 M | $ 879 M |
| Gross Profit | $ 249 M | $ 314 M | $ 347 M | $ 108 M | $ 111 M |
| Operating Income (EBIT) | $ 221 M | $ 273 M | $ 305 M | $ 62 M | $ 38 M |
| Interest Expense | $ 2.8 M | $ 3.8 M | $ 6.9 M | $ 3.3 M | $ 3.2 M |
| Net Income | $ 166 M | $ 200 M | $ 274 M | $ 58 M | $ 76 M |
| Net Income Attributable to Owners | $ 166 M | $ 200 M | $ 274 M | $ 58 M | $ 76 M |
| Depreciation & Amortization | $ 156 M | $ 163 M | $ 169 M | $ 159 M | $ 164 M |
| FY2021 | FY2022 | FY2023 | FY2024 | FY2025 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cash & Equivalents | $ 508 M | $ 634 M | $ 699 M | $ 675 M | $ 376 M |
| Accounts Receivable | $ 102 M | $ 141 M | $ 102 M | $ 84 M | $ 74 M |
| Inventory | $ 162 M | $ 156 M | $ 156 M | $ 149 M | $ 192 M |
| Current Assets | $ 837 M | $ 990 M | $ 1.0 B | $ 1.0 B | $ 749 M |
| Total Assets | $ 2.5 B | $ 2.7 B | $ 2.9 B | $ 3.2 B | $ 3.3 B |
| Accounts Payable | $ 122 M | $ 116 M | $ 141 M | $ 171 M | $ 204 M |
| Current Liabilities | $ 168 M | $ 175 M | $ 217 M | $ 263 M | $ 362 M |
| Total Liabilities | $ 318 M | $ 303 M | $ 361 M | $ 444 M | $ 571 M |
| Total Interest-Bearing Debt | $ 4.8 M | $ 5.7 M | $ 8.6 M | $ 8.0 M | $ 3.5 M |
| Total Equity | $ 2.2 B | $ 2.4 B | $ 2.6 B | $ 2.7 B | $ 2.8 B |
| Equity Attributable to Owners | $ 2.2 B | $ 2.4 B | $ 2.6 B | $ 2.7 B | $ 2.8 B |
| FY2021 | FY2022 | FY2023 | FY2024 | FY2025 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Operating Cash Flow | $ 335 M | $ 348 M | $ 421 M | $ 207 M | $ 235 M |
| Capital Expenditure | $ 181 M | $ 219 M | $ 286 M | $ 332 M | $ 486 M |
INCO gross margin: 26.1 % (2021) → 26.6 % (2022) → 28.2 % (2023) → 11.4 % (2024) → 11.2 % (2025). OPM: 23.2 % → 23.1 % → 24.8 % → 6.5 % → 3.9 %. Net margin: 17.4 % → 17.0 % → 22.3 % → 6.1 % → 7.7 %. ROE: 7.7 % → 8.5 % → 10.7 % → 2.1 % → 2.7 %. ROIC: 7.8 % → 8.6 % → 10.9 % → 2.2 % → 1.4 %. EBITDA margin: 39.5 % → 36.9 % → 38.5 % → 23.3 % → 20.4 %. D/E: ~0.002 throughout; effectively debt-free, with net cash of −USD 0.37 B to −0.69 B every year. Current ratio: 5.0× → 5.7× → 4.8× → 3.8× → 2.1×. FCF (USD): +154 M → +129 M → +135 M → −125 M → −251 M. Revenue (USD): 0.95 B → 1.18 B → 1.23 B → 0.95 B → 0.99 B. Two facts define INCO: (1) an immaculate balance sheet; no debt, always net cash, so no financial-stress risk whatever nickel does; and (2) structurally modest returns; even the 2023 peak was only 10.7 % ROE, and the nickel crash took 2024–2025 to ~2–3 %. The heavy asset base and matte-price-taker model cap through-cycle ROE well below the coal miners’ supercycle numbers. FCF turned negative in 2024–2025 not from operating weakness but from the ramp into a multi-billion-dollar growth-capex phase: funded comfortably from cash and partners, not leverage. INCO is a quality-balance-sheet, low-return, high-capex transition asset whose earnings are a near-pure play on the LME nickel price.
Ore comes from reserves INCO owns at Sorowako, so the first step buys nothing. The cost is stripping, extraction and haulage, not a purchase price set by a supplier.
EconomicsNo supplier margin sits inside the input. INCO therefore carries no raw-material price risk on the way in, which is precisely why every swing in the LME nickel price lands on the output side alone.
Dried and reduced ore is smelted in electric furnaces run largely on INCO’s own hydroelectric cascade on the Larona river.
EconomicsThe cost advantage and the cost rigidity live in the same step. Between FY2023 and FY2025 revenue fell 19.64% while cost of goods sold fell 0.67%: the furnaces, the dams and the workforce do not scale down when the nickel price does.
Output is nickel matte, sold almost entirely to related parties Vale Canada and Sumitomo Metal Mining under long-term offtake priced off the LME benchmark.
EconomicsNo margin is made at this step by design, because the price is taken rather than set. Commercial risk is correspondingly low and pricing upside is zero beyond volume and the benchmark itself.
Receivables were collected in 27.18 days in FY2025, the fastest of the five years, while suppliers were paid in 84.60 days, the slowest of the five.
EconomicsThe cash cycle now runs at 22.31 days against 59.67 days in FY2021. More than half of that 37.36-day gain, 56.9%, came from paying suppliers later rather than from selling or collecting faster, which makes it a financing gain rather than an operating one and not repeatable indefinitely.
Cost structureThe decisive fact about INCO’s cost base is that it did not follow the price down. Between the FY2023 peak and FY2025, revenue fell 19.64% (USD 1,232.3m to USD 990.2m) while cost of goods sold fell 0.67% (USD 885.2m to USD 879.3m). Of the USD 242.1m of lost revenue, USD 236.2m, or 97.56%, landed straight on gross profit. Cost of goods sold absorbed 71.84% of revenue in FY2023 and 88.81% in FY2025, and operating margin fell 20.88 percentage points, from 24.76% to 3.88%. This is a high-fixed-cost smelter attached to a price it does not control.
Cash cycleCash conversion cycle: 59.67 days (FY2021) to 22.31 days (FY2025), a 37.36-day improvement. Decomposed, inventory days fell 4.24 (83.96 to 79.72), receivable days fell 11.87 (39.05 to 27.18), and payable days rose 21.25 (63.35 to 84.60). Stretching payables contributed 56.9% of the total gain, collecting faster 31.8%, and inventory only 11.3%. Read plainly: the working-capital improvement is mostly supplier financing, and a supplier-financed cycle tightens again the moment terms normalise.
Unit economicsEach dollar of FY2025 revenue carried 88.81 cents of cost of goods sold, against 71.84 cents in FY2023. Depreciation and amortisation of USD 163.9m was 4.26 times EBIT of USD 38.5m, meaning the asset base is currently being written down at more than four times the rate the operation earns.
INCO owns its Sorowako laterite reserves and, critically, generates most of its own smelting power from captive hydro (Larona/Balambano/Karebbe dams), insulating it from fuel-price swings. Mining and processing inputs are competitively sourced. The growth JVs bring partner-supplied technology (Huayou HPAL) but on negotiated terms.
Implication → Captive hydro is a durable cost advantage: it keeps Sorowako low on the nickel cash-cost curve and is why INCO stayed profitable through the 2024–2025 price crash where higher-cost NPI/HPAL bled.
Matte is LME-benchmarked and sold almost entirely to two related parties (Vale Canada, Sumitomo): concentrated offtake with no seller pricing power. The related-party structure guarantees volume but also means transfer pricing follows LME formulas rather than negotiated premiums. Battery-grade output (future) will sell into a Chinese/Korean-buyer-heavy market.
Implication → Earnings are a near-pure LME-nickel play with guaranteed offtake: low commercial risk, but no pricing upside beyond the benchmark and volume.
Sorowako’s integrated mine-plus-hydro-plus-smelter complex took decades and billions to build and cannot be quickly replicated. New nickel capacity is entering elsewhere (Chinese-backed HPAL/RKEF at IMIP/IWIP), that is the oversupply that crashed prices, but replicating INCO’s specific captive-hydro, low-carbon position is hard. IUPK, RKAB and AMDAL gate any entrant.
Implication → INCO’s asset is protected, but the broader nickel market is not: new low-cost Chinese-backed supply sets the price INCO receives. Its edge is cost/carbon quality, not scarcity of supply.
Class-1 nickel demand for batteries faces LFP-chemistry substitution (LFP uses no nickel and has gained share versus NMC), softening the long-run nickel-demand slope. Stainless steel (the traditional nickel sink) has no substitute at scale. The battery-grade pivot (HPAL/MHP) is INCO’s attempt to ride the surviving NMC/high-nickel demand while stainless underpins the base.
Implication → Nickel carries a chemistry-substitution risk that copper/gold do not: the reason INCO’s downstream bet is on high-nickel battery chemistries and low-carbon credentials rather than volume alone.
INCO competes in a global nickel market flooded post-2020 by Chinese-backed Indonesian NPI/HPAL (Tsingshan/IMIP-IWIP, Harita/NCKL): the direct cause of the price crash. Domestically it sits alongside ANTM and the Chinese-JV complexes. INCO’s differentiation is low-carbon, hydro-powered, integrated production: increasingly valued if Western/Korean buyers pay for traceable, low-carbon nickel.
Implication → INCO can’t out-scale the Chinese-backed complexes; its play is the low-carbon, ESG-traceable premium plus balance-sheet durability to outlast the oversupply cycle.
Take the operating line, not the net line. In FY2025 net margin (7.68%) sat ABOVE operating margin (3.88%) by 3.80 percentage points, and net income of USD 76.1m was 1.977 times EBIT of USD 38.5m. Interest expense was only USD 3.2m, so roughly USD 37.6m of the FY2025 result arrived from below the operating line, and the seeded statements do not identify what it was. The consequence matters: net income rose from USD 57.8m to USD 76.1m while EBIT fell from USD 62.1m to USD 38.5m over the same year. The headline recovery is not an operating recovery. This is the same below-the-line signature flagged at ADRO and UNVR, and it is read the same way here.
| Period | One-off item | Impact |
|---|---|---|
| FY2025 | Net income above EBIT: a non-operating contribution not identified in the seeded statements | USD 37.6m, equal to 49.43% of reported net income of USD 76.1m. Set it aside and the FY2025 result falls below the FY2024 net income of USD 57.8m instead of rising above it. |
Cash conversionOperating cash flow of USD 234.7m against net income of USD 76.1m is 3.086 times, which looks exceptional and is not. Depreciation and amortisation of USD 163.9m is 4.26 times EBIT, so the cash arriving is largely the depreciation charge coming back, not earnings being converted. The test that matters for a company in build phase is operating cash flow against capital expenditure, and on that test INCO consumed cash: free cash flow was negative USD 124.6m in FY2024 and negative USD 251.2m in FY2025.
INCO is building, and it is building at the bottom of its own return cycle. Across FY2021 to FY2025 it generated USD 1,546.2m of operating cash flow and spent USD 1,503.7m on capital expenditure, or 97.25% of it. Cumulative free cash flow over the five years was USD 42.5m on USD 5,305.5m of cumulative revenue: 0.80%. Five years of production turned into eight-tenths of one percent of revenue in free cash. The programme is funded from the balance sheet rather than from lenders, which removes solvency risk but does not answer the return question.
DeploymentFY2025 capital expenditure of USD 485.9m was 49.07% of revenue and 2.97 times depreciation of USD 163.9m: unmistakably growth spending rather than maintenance. It is being paid for out of the cash pile. Cash and equivalents fell 46.14%, from USD 698.8m at FY2023 to USD 376.4m at FY2025, and the current ratio fell from 4.77 times to 2.07 times. Distributions continued alongside the build at a 1.48% dividend yield. Debt was not used: total debt actually fell over the five years, from USD 4.8m to USD 3.5m.
Returns trendMeasured against the engine’s own WACC of 11.08% (discount band 9.3% / 11.3% / 13.3%), INCO’s ROIC cleared its cost of capital in none of the five years: 7.79%, 8.63%, 10.95%, 2.23%, 1.39%. The FY2023 peak missed the hurdle by 13.6 basis points, the closest it came. That is the central tension in the capital-allocation case. Management is committing capital at roughly half of annual revenue into an asset base that has not earned its hurdle rate in any year on this record. The build may change that, and the low-carbon, battery-grade product mix is a credible reason it might; the five years of evidence available here do not yet show it.
ROIC was below the engine WACC of 11.08% in all five years (7.79%, 8.63%, 10.95%, 2.23%, 1.39%), and the gap widened to 9.70 percentage points in FY2025 while capital expenditure rose to 49.07% of revenue. Spending is accelerating into the widest return gap on record here.
FY2025 net income of USD 76.1m exceeded EBIT of USD 38.5m by USD 37.6m against interest expense of just USD 3.2m. Net margin sat above operating margin. The item is not identified in the seeded statements, so the FY2025 earnings recovery cannot be attributed to operations.
Cash and equivalents fell 46.14% from USD 698.8m (FY2023) to USD 376.4m (FY2025); the current ratio fell from 4.77 times to 2.07 times; free cash flow was negative in both FY2024 and FY2025. None of this is distress, because net cash remains USD 372.9m, but the funding runway for a multi-year programme is visibly shorter than it was.
Matte is sold almost entirely to two related parties, Vale Canada and Sumitomo Metal Mining, at LME-linked formula prices. The seeded statements carry no segment or customer split, so realised pricing cannot be tested against the benchmark from this data. The exposure is disclosed and structural rather than hidden, but it is untestable here and is recorded as such.
Checked, none found. Non-controlling interests were 0.00% of FY2025 equity, so consolidated earnings are fully attributable to INCO shareholders. This is the cleanest attribution of the four nickel-complex names tracked here and stands in direct contrast to MDKA, where minorities hold 72.94% of consolidated equity.
Checked, none found. Debt to equity was 0.0013 at FY2025 with net cash of USD 372.9m. Interest coverage fell from 80.12 times to 12.04 times, but that is entirely a numerator effect: total debt FELL over the same period, from USD 4.8m to USD 3.5m, so the decline reflects collapsing EBIT rather than any deterioration in credit.
Curated narrative (educational interpretation), backed by the linked sources. The figures above are deterministic. Not investment advice.
Indonesia controls >60 % of global nickel supply and is the world's largest thermal-coal exporter; hilirisasi mandates in-country ore processing, reshaping value chains from raw ore to battery-grade products.