BUENAVENTURA MINING CO INC (BVN): what the price requires
At today's price, BUENAVENTURA MINING CO INC (BVN) is priced for +2.0% growth. boothcheck doesn't publish a fair value or a price target; it shows what the price assumes, so you can judge whether that bar is too high.
Generated: 2026-07-19 · Exported: 2026-07-20 · Source: https://boothcheck.com/report/BVN
Headline
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Ticker | BVN |
| Company | BUENAVENTURA MINING CO INC |
| Sector / Industry | Basic Materials |
| Current price | $30.22/sh |
| Composition | Silver 39% / Gold 24% / Copper 37% / Zinc 4% / Lead 2% / Antimony 0% / Manganese sulfate 1% / Commercial deductions -8% / Services 1% |
What The Price Requires (Inversion)
The assumption today's price embeds, recovered by inverting the valuation.
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Inversion basis | whole-company |
| Operating margin needed | 18.6% |
| Operating margin today | 38.6% |
| Margin compression implied | -20.0pp |
| Implied growth | 2.0% |
| Multiple paid | 13x operating income |
The operating-margin requirement is derived from the framework's value band at year 12, a separately labeled basis from the headline growth/duration solve.
Solve inputs: computed at a 9.2% cost of capital with 4% terminal growth over a 5-year stage; each 1pp of cost of capital moves the implied operating-profit growth ~5.6pp.
How unusual the bet is: within-range (limited comparison data)
| Reference | Value |
|---|---|
| vs own history | -0.46σ |
| implied end-window share | 0% |
Valuation X-Ray
Asset, earnings-power and peer-multiple models all land far below the price; ONLY the growth-DCF reaches it. The bet is durable compounding the static frames structurally cannot price (a moat/durability premium).
How the valuation models price the stock relative to the market price. Price/FV above 1.0 means the market pays more than that lens defends (expensive); at or below 1.0 the lens can defend the price.
| Family | Median price/FV | Models | Reads |
|---|---|---|---|
| Asset | 1.52x | 5 | expensive |
| Earnings | 1.76x | 3 | expensive |
| Relative | 1.58x | 5 | expensive |
| Growth | 1.06x | 3 | expensive |
Families that justify the price: Growth Families that call it expensive: Asset, Earnings, Relative
The models below discount at their own flat-beta convention rates (cost of equity 9.3%, WACC 8.7%); the inversion above states its own rate.
Per-Model Detail (n=16)
| Model | Family | FV | Price/FV | Applicable | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DCF Perpetual Growth | Growth | $14.89 | 2.03x | yes | FCF base $0.1B, growth 17% (input: historical growth), terminal g 4.0%, WACC 8.7%, 5yr projection |
| DCF Exit Multiple | Growth | $33.61 | 0.90x | yes | Exit EV/EBITDA: 8.8x / 13.8x / 18.8x (bear / base = today's held flat / bull), 5yr |
| Relative Valuation | Relative | $23.82 | 1.27x | yes | P/E 14x (static sector reference · 2026-04), scenarios: 10.5x / 14.0x / 16.8x (bear / base = reference held flat / bull), EV/EBITDA 9.73x |
| Simple DDM | Growth | — | — | no | — |
| Two-Stage DDM | Growth | — | — | no | — |
| Simple Excess Return | Asset | $17.72 | 1.71x | yes | BV/sh $14.02, ROE (TTM) 11.7%, ke 9.3% |
| Two-Stage Excess Return | Asset | $19.82 | 1.52x | yes | 5yr excess ROE then converge to ke=9.3% |
| Discounted Future Market Cap | Growth | $28.61 | 1.06x | yes | Rev $1.2B, growth 17% (input: historical growth; tapered), Terminal P/S: 4.5x / 6.0x / 7.2x (bear / base = today's held flat / bull, cap 6x) |
| Peter Lynch Fair Value | Relative | $19.08 | 1.58x | yes | EPS $1.59, growth 2% (input: historical EPS growth), PEG=9.22 (Overvalued) |
| Margin Trajectory | Growth | — | — | no | — |
| Earnings Power Value | Earnings | $0.01 | 3021.50x | yes | Normalized EBIT (5y avg op income, one-time charges added back) $0.06B × (1−27%) / WACC 8.7% → EPV (no growth) (excluded from median) |
| Residual Income | Asset | $20.24 | 1.49x | yes | BV $14.02 + 5yr PV of (ROE (TTM) 11.7% − Kₑ 9.3%) × BV; BV grows 7.6%/yr |
| Graham Number | Asset | $22.39 | 1.35x | yes | √(22.5 × EPS $1.59 × BVPS $14.02) — Graham's conservative floor |
| EV/EBITDA Relative | Relative | $16.70 | 1.81x | yes | EBITDA $0.60B × sector EV/EBITDA 8.0x |
| FCF Yield | Earnings | $4.23 | 7.14x | yes | FCF $148.3M / Kₑ 9.3% — zero-growth perpetuity |
| SBC-Adj FCF Yield | Earnings | — | — | no | — |
| Ben Graham Formula | Earnings | $51.30 | 0.59x | yes | EPS $1.59 × (8.5 + 2×15.0%) × (4.4 / 5.3%) |
| ROIC-Justified P/B | Asset | $12.74 | 2.37x | yes | BV $14.02 × (ROIC 7.9% / WACC 8.7%) |
| P/Sales Sector | Relative | $6.86 | 4.40x | yes | Revenue $1.16B × sector P/S 1.5x |
| PEG Fair Value | Relative | $59.63 | 0.51x | yes | EPS $1.59 × (PEG 1.5 × growth 25.0% (input: historical EPS growth)) → PE 37.5x |
| Earnings Yield | Earnings | $17.19 | 1.76x | yes | EPS $1.59 / required return 9.3% (Rf 4.3% + ERP 5.0%) |
| Funds From Operations Multiple | Relative | — | — | no | — |
| Clinical Phase NPV | Growth | — | — | no | — |
| Merton | Asset | — | — | no | — |
| V5 Mechanical | — | — | — | no | — |
Solvency
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Net cash | $478.4m |
| Net debt / NOPAT (after-tax) | -1.48x (net cash) |
| Net debt / operating income (pre-tax) | -1.07x (net cash) |
| Interest coverage | 6.8x |
| Burning cash | no |
Bullet Takeaways
- Buenaventura is a Peru-based polymetallic miner, with silver at 39%, copper at 37% and gold at 24% of revenue, plus a 19.58% stake in the Cerro Verde copper mine that pays it cash dividends, so it is not the pure gold play many of its peers are.
- The defining risk is external: as a cyclical miner concentrated in Peru, its earnings ride on metal prices and on a political and permitting system it does not control, and today's cash generation reflects a rich gold and copper tape.
- What to watch is San Gabriel, the gold project now ramping, and the size of the next Cerro Verde dividend, the two swing factors in cash generation over the coming year.
Bull Case
The knock on Buenaventura almost writes itself. It is a Peruvian miner, its permits and costs answer to a famously unstable political system, and it is earning cycle-high economics at what looks like the top of a gold and copper market. Pay above what asset value and peer multiples support for that, the bear says, and you are buying peak earnings dressed up as normal. The data makes the story harder than that.
Look at what the price actually asks. To reach $30.22 (July 19, 2026) the business needs to grow operating income only about 3.4% a year, and it can clear that bar even as its operating margin slides toward 19.6%, well under the 38.6% it earns today. That is not a demanding forecast for a company holding $478.4M of net cash and no debt to service. Behind the mines sits a second engine: a 19.58% interest in the Cerro Verde copper operation, held alongside Freeport-McMoRan and Sumitomo, that sends Buenaventura cash. Its FY2025 20-F records one such distribution, US$ 500 million, of which US$ 97.9 million corresponds to the Group.
The visible growth is gold. San Gabriel entered its ramp in early 2026 and lifted gold output, the first major new production the company has brought on in years. And the reserve base behind the business is polymetallic, not single-metal: the 20-F carries measured and indicated resources across copper, silver and molybdenum. When silver leads the revenue mix at 39%, a soft stretch in one metal does not sink the whole ship. That spread of metals, plus the copper dividend from Cerro Verde, is the case for the earnings being steadier than a through-cycle average would guess, which is exactly what the price is paying up for.
Bear Case
Every dollar of this thesis routes through two things Buenaventura does not control: the government of Peru and the price of metal. The company's own 20-F lists Peruvian political, economic, social and legal developments among its standing risks, the plain acknowledgment that permits for its growth projects are granted, or withheld, by a volatile system. A regional base-metals peer puts the price mechanism bluntly: profitability depends primarily on prevailing world prices for the metals we produce and on our unit cost to produce them (0001292814-26-001787). Buenaventura has no more grip on either lever than its neighbors do.
The margin flatters the present. Buenaventura is earning cycle-high economics on a rich metals tape, and industry costs are moving the wrong way. A silver-mining peer's latest 10-K ties its higher costs to higher silver prices and production, insurance and medical inflation (0001193125-26-055059); a large copper peer's disclosures walk through the cash cost of production net of by-product credits, the number that decides who survives a downturn (0001104659-26-021492). Buenaventura sits on the same cost curve. Let metal prices ease while wages and inputs stay sticky, and the current margin compresses toward the modest level the price already assumes, taking the cash that funds dividends and San Gabriel with it.
Here is the sharper version of the concern. Of the ways to value this company, only the forward-growth lens reaches the price at all; the methods that read asset value, earnings power and peer multiples all land well below it. That means the price is not cheap on what the company has already banked. It is a bet that the current earnings power is durable, and durability is precisely what a Peru-concentrated cyclical cannot promise. The metals could roll over, a permit could stall, or a political turn could reset the tax and royalty math. Any of those, and the premium the market is paying for durability is the first thing to go.
Valuation
At $30.22 (July 19, 2026), the price works out to about 13x Buenaventura's company-wide operating income. Read backwards, that multiple embeds only a modest demand: company-wide operating income growing roughly 3.4% a year. It does not even require the current profitability to hold. The same price is consistent with the operating margin sliding to about 19.6%, well under the 38.6% the company earns today. The market is not asking for heroics. It is asking whether cycle-high cash generation holds up.
Line up the ways of valuing the company and they disagree in a specific way. The asset-value methods, the earnings-power methods and the peer multiple methods all land below the price, while only the forward-growth method reaches it. The reason is not a contradiction. The static lenses capitalize what the company has already earned and owns, and on that basis, with a return on equity near 11.7% against a cost of equity around 9.3%, the spread is thin and the stock looks full. The forward lens reaches the price only if today's elevated cash generation persists instead of fading to a through-cycle average. The gap between the two reads is the durability premium, and it is the whole question.
The balance sheet removes the usual cyclical worry. Buenaventura holds $478.4M in net cash with essentially no debt, and operating income covers its interest bill roughly 6.8x over, so a bad year is survivable rather than existential. The unusual asset is the Cerro Verde stake, a minority interest in a large copper mine that delivers cash the operating segments do not, and which sits outside the mine-by-mine value the standard methods capture. The price is full on what Buenaventura has banked. Whether it is full on what Buenaventura can keep banking, through Peru's politics and the metals cycle, is the question the buyer is actually answering.
Catalysts
The most recent print was a strong one. Buenaventura reported first-quarter 2026 revenue of about $624.6M, roughly double the prior year, with net income near $335.4M and EPS of $1.32, as the San Gabriel gold ramp and firm metal prices lifted results. Gold output rose about 8% and silver about 6% year over year, while copper eased in line with the mine plan at El Brocal.
Cash from Cerro Verde keeps arriving on top of that. Buenaventura's year-to-date 2026 dividends from the stake ran about $156.6M. The mine behind them is large, expected to throw off over $2.5B of EBITDA, so even a minority interest is meaningful to a $7.7B company. On the growth side, the company secured government authorization for the Coimolache Sulfuros copper deposit beneath its existing Coimolache gold operation, one more permit converted in a country where permitting is never guaranteed.
The forward calendar centers on two things: San Gabriel reaching steady-state gold production, and the quarterly cadence of Cerro Verde distributions, both of which show up directly in cash. The overhang is the Peruvian backdrop, where the mining industry heads into 2026 amid political uncertainty even as new projects advance. For a miner this concentrated in one country, that backdrop is not noise around the thesis. It is part of it.
Peer Cohorts (Per Segment, With Filing Citations)
Core business (reported)
- KGC (KINROSS GOLD CORP)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- GFI (Gold Fields Limited)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- HL (HECLA MINING COMPANY)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- AGI (ALAMOS GOLD INC.)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- PAAS (Pan American Silver Corp.)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- SCCO (SOUTHERN COPPER CORPORATION)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- NEXA (NEXA RESOURCES S.A.)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- CLF (CLEVELAND-CLIFFS INC.)
- (no filing in the citation store)
Methodology Note
- Priced-in inversion: the valuation is inverted on the current price to recover the operating-income growth, duration, and steady-state margin the price embeds (ROE for financials, FFO growth for REITs).
- Valuation x-ray: the valuation models, grouped into four families (asset, earnings, relative, growth). Each model is expressed as a price/FV ratio (distance from price), not a point fair-value estimate. The spread across families is the disagreement.
- Solvency: net cash/debt, net-debt-to-NOPAT, interest coverage, and share-count CAGR from EDGAR financials (net debt / FFO and fixed-charge coverage for REITs; regulatory-capital framing for financials).
- Peer cohorts: per-segment comparables with deep-linkable SEC filing citations.
Fundamentals sourced from SEC EDGAR filings. Current price from Databento. The priced-in inversion and valuation x-ray are computed by the boothcheck engine; narrative composed by AI from the structured data.
Sources
BVN FY2025 20-F, Cerro Verde 19.58% associate stake · Buenaventura Q1 2026 results, San Gabriel ramp-up · BVN FY2025 20-F, Cerro Verde dividend approved January 2026 · Buenaventura Q1 2026 results, San Gabriel drove higher gold production · BVN FY2025 20-F, mineral resources statement · BVN FY2025 20-F, forward-looking risk factors · Buenaventura Q1 2026 results, reported April 2026 · Buenaventura Q1 2026 production release · Buenaventura Q1 2026 Cerro Verde dividend disclosure · Buenaventura Q1 2026 disclosure on Cerro Verde EBITDA scale · Buenaventura 2026 disclosure on Coimolache Sulfuros authorization · BNamericas, Peruvian mining 2026 outlook