Fortescue Metals chairman Andrew Forrest has flagged more pain for the iron ore industry as shareholders hit the miner with a large protest vote.
Proxy advisers led the 17 per cent vote against the pure play iron ore miner's 2015 pay report on Wednesday.
Mr Forrest, who is recovering from a serious knee injury sustained while bushwalking in north Western Australia, said the board did not plan to change its remuneration report and urged shareholders to talk before casting a protest vote on technical grounds.
"There are shareholders there who are from overseas; they either didn't vote or thought the share price has gone down so what do we do about it?" Mr Forrest told reporters on the sidelines of the company's annual general meeting in Perth on Wednesday.
"It's an iron ore company, it goes up and down with the iron ore price."
He said the protest would only have amounted to around seven per cent of the vote if he had used his personal voting rights.
Australian companies incur a "first strike" if 25 per cent or more of votes are cast against a motion at an AGM and a spill vote is held if they record two strikes in a row.
Mr Forrest owns a third of the company's shares which have halved in value over the past 18 months amid weaker iron ore prices and subdued Chinese steel demand.
He said iron ore prices could remain between $US40 and $US50 per tonne "for a little time".
"It could well get darker before it gets brighter in the iron ore industry," Mr Forrest said.
Fortescue had calculated the balance between dividend payments and cash flow after shelling out $70 million in dividends in full year 2015.
The world's fourth-largest iron ore miner will run a tender to buy back corporate bonds worth $US750 million ($A1.07 billion) due in 2019 and 2022 to help cut its debt and reduce interest costs.
Fortescue also said it believes China's long-term growth remains strong, with steel demand sitting above 800 million tonnes per annum.
The company said it is under no pressure to carry out an equity raising as it placed around three quarters of new inventory onto its resources.
Mr Forrest declined to reveal how he suffered a knee injury while bushwalking in the Kimberley last month but said the recovery process had given him some thinking time.
"I'm lucky to be still be standing on two legs so I feel grateful - I think I got off lightly," he said.
