Turquoise Hill Resources is a Canadian mineral exploration and development company headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia. Its focus is on the Pacific Rim where it is in the process of developing several large mines, the principal one being the Oyu Tolgoi Project in Southern Mongolia 200 km east of Dalanzadgad. The company was called Ivanhoe Mines until August 2, 2012 when an important financing agreement was made with Rio Tinto.In addition to operations that it runs directly (Oyu Tolgoi) Turquoise Hill Resources has a subsidiary in Australia (59% owned Ivanhoe Australia down from 81% in the summer of 2010). SouthGobi is Ivanhoe Mine's coal operations in Mongolia.
The Oyu Tolgoi Project is considered one of the world's largest copper and gold porphyry deposits. For development to happen at Oyu Tolgoi, an agreement had to be made in which the Mongolian government took a 34% stake in the project; the royalty arrangement it currently has with the Mongolian government took years to reach which caused significant delays in project development.In Australia, Turquoise Hill Resources has stakes in mines containing gold, uranium, copper and the world's highest grade molybdenum and rhenium.
In Mongolia SouthGobi produces coal and controls several other gold and copper mine development projects. It owns a 50% interest in the Kyzyl gold project in Kazakhstan through Altynalmas Gold and has exploration projects in China, Indonesia and the Philippines. Turquise Hill Resources also owns 14% of Entree Gold, a company with interests in copper and gold projects in southern Mongolia and Arizona, and 14% of Exco Resources which operates Cloncurry's copper project and the White Dam gold mine in Australia. The company's largest shareholder is Rio Tinto, which recently increased its stake to 51%. This is up from 46.5% beforehand. In June 2011 Rio Tinto paid $502 million for 55 million additional shares, increasing its control to 46.5% from 42% (35% prior to that) and giving it an extra seat on the board (up to 7/14), though Rio Tinto was restricted from increasing its stake in the company to a majority before 2012. Since 2006 Rio Tinto invested $3.5 billion in Ivanhoe Mines. Former Canadian prime minister Jean Chrétien is a special advisor to the company.In September 2010 it was reported that exploration around Oyu Tolgoi at the Heruga North deposit revealed higher reserves of gold and copper than previously estimated (the news caused IVN share prices to rise 6%). Capital spending is likely to reach $5Bn; in October 2010, Ivanhoe announced a new $1Bn share offering in order to raise funds to develop this mine. Due to new entitlement offers by Ivanhoe Australia (made to raise funding in order to develop assets in North Queensland, Australia) Ivanhoe Mines' interest in the company was reduced from 81% to 62%. At the end of March 2011 construction of Oyu Toloi was 15% complete. At the end of February 2012 construction of Oyu Tolgoi was 73% complete.In 2016 Turquoise Hill produced 201,300 tonnes of copper and 300,000 ounces of gold, exceeding guidance and generating US$1.2 billion in revenue. The Company recorded net income from continuing operations attributable to owners of Turquoise Hill of $210.6 million.