Vale S.A. is a Brazilian mining company whose principal executive office is at Praia de Botafogo 186, 18th floor, Botafogo, in Rio de Janeiro. It reports to the US Securities and Exchange Commission as a foreign private issuer filing an annual report on Form 20-F, and its common shares trade in Brazil and abroad, including through American Depositary Receipts. The company's base metals business is held through its subsidiary Vale Base Metals Ltd, which operates the Salobo copper complex in Pará state. Marcelo Feriozzi Bacci signs the company's regulatory releases as executive vice president for finance and investor relations.
A new buyback and capital allocation
On 30 July 2026 Vale's board approved a new programme to repurchase up to 100 million common shares, including the corresponding American Depositary Receipts, within 18 months, ending on 29 January 2028. The authorisation covers roughly 2.3% of the company's shares in issue and followed the approaching expiry of the previous programme, under which about 14 million shares had been bought back since it began on 19 February 2025. The new programme took effect on 19 August 2026 and is executed on stock exchanges at market prices under Brazilian capital markets rules, with details published as an annex to CVM Resolution 80/2022. The company counted 4,255,762,795 shares outstanding excluding treasury shares at the time of the announcement, and its statement linked the buyback to a disciplined approach to capital allocation and to sharing value with shareholders.
Copper expansion at Salobo
On 12 August 2026 Vale announced that Vale Base Metals was moving the coarse particle flotation project at its Salobo copper complex in Pará into execution. Start-up is expected in the first half of 2028, roughly a year earlier than the original schedule, after project optimisation and execution improvements that also lowered the capital estimate to about USD 215 million from an initial range of USD 225 million to USD 275 million. Vale Base Metals' own share of the spending is expected to be about USD 175 million. The project is designed to add 6 million tonnes to Salobo's annual ore processing capacity, taking the plant to 42 million tonnes a year, and to lift annual copper production by up to roughly 30,000 tonnes contained in concentrate, with about 15,000 ounces of gold as a by-product. Wheaton Precious Metals has agreed to contribute USD 40 million in two milestone payments instead of future payments that could have fallen due under an existing Salobo streaming agreement; the project follows record Salobo output in 2024 and 2025.
Operations, court agreements and royalties
Vale announced on 23 September 2026 that it would begin the partial resumption of operations at the Fábrica mine in Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais, under an authorisation from the Court of Justice of the State of Minas Gerais and a commitment agreement signed with the state public prosecutor's office and the state government. The company said the restart would comply with safety requirements, environmental controls, licences and the obligations in that agreement, and that it does not change current production guidance. Earlier, on 5 August 2026, Vale responded to press reports about charges of CFEM mining royalties raised by Brazil's National Mining Agency, stating that it pays the royalty regularly, that it considers the charges unfounded and that it would respond through the competent authorities; the company pointed readers to its 2026 reference form and to note 27.b of its 2025 consolidated financial statements.
Results and reporting
Vale published its second-quarter 2026 performance report on 31 July 2026. In the interim financial statements filed with the SEC for the period, net operating revenue for the three months to 30 June 2026 was 53,012 million Brazilian reais against 49,807 million a year earlier, with gross profit of 16,179 million reais compared with 15,386 million. For the six months to 30 June 2026, net operating revenue reached 101,692 million reais and gross profit 32,436 million reais, against 97,218 million and 30,986 million respectively in the first half of 2025. The company continues to file current reports on Form 6-K, with submissions through 24 September 2026 covering matters such as the buyback, the Salobo project and the Fábrica restart.
Contact
Investor and press enquiries for the group are directed to [email protected], the address printed in the company's regulatory releases, alongside named investor relations officers. Vale's corporate website returns an access-denied response to automated requests, so the information in this profile was taken from the company's own SEC filings and from news indexing of its quarterly reporting rather than from its website pages.