COEUR MINING, INC. (CDE): what the price assumes

In the published model solve dated 2026-Q2, anchored at $21.16, COEUR MINING, INC. (CDE) is priced for today's economics sustained for ~12.4 years. boothcheck publishes no house fair value, target price, or buy/sell rating; individual model outputs and user-controlled scenarios are analytical inputs, not Boothcheck targets. Narrative composed 2026-08-07.

Generated: 2026-09-07 · Exported: 2026-09-09 · Source: https://boothcheck.com/report/CDE

Headline

What The Price Assumes (Inversion)

The assumption today's price embeds, recovered by inverting the valuation.

The operating-margin figure is value-band context at year 7: derived from the framework's value band, a separate calculation — not part of the priced-in solve.

Solve inputs: computed at a 14.5% cost of capital; growth searched up to the 25% self-funding ceiling.

How unusual the bet is: n/a

Valuation X-Ray

The price is supported by earnings-power value, while asset-based lands below the price. A value/asset-supported name, not a pure growth bet.

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.

Families that justify the price: Earnings Families that call it expensive: Asset

The models below discount at their own flat-beta convention rates (cost of equity 9.3%, WACC 9.3%); the inversion above states its own rate.

Per-Model Detail (n=9)

Solvency

Interest expense is not separately reported in the latest filings, so interest coverage cannot be computed.

Bullet Takeaways

• Two stock-funded acquisitions have roughly doubled the business: revenue reached a record $1,085.6 million in the June 2026 quarter, up 126% on the year, with Rainy River contributing $304.8 million of it in its first full quarter under Coeur.
• Realized metal prices are already falling while the equity is priced for a long run of growth, with the quarter's average realizations of 4,140 dollars an ounce for gold and 71.18 dollars an ounce for silver down 6% and 14% from the prior quarter, and June's realizations the lowest of the year.
• The share count has compounded about 27.6% a year since early 2022 because the acquisitions were paid for in stock, and the newly launched capital return programme has so far bought back 6.7 million shares, which is a fraction of what was issued.

Bull Case

In mining there is no brand, no switching cost and no pricing power. What passes for a moat is a position on the cost curve and a set of assets with years of life left in them, and by that measure the Coeur of today is not the company it was eighteen months ago. Two stock-funded acquisitions have assembled what management describes as a platform of North American precious metals assets built through a combination of disciplined investments in organic growth and two well-timed acquisitions, and the June quarter was the first full period in which the whole thing ran together.

The results say the assembly worked. Revenue reached a record $1,085.6 million, up 27% from the March quarter and 126% from a year earlier. Gold production hit a record 163,490 ounces, half again as much as the prior year, and cash flow from operating activities came to $513 million in three months. The trailing operating margin sits near 38.7%, which is what it looks like when a business sells a commodity it cannot price into a market that has been paying well.

Diversification across seven producing operations is the part that is easy to underrate. In the June quarter Rainy River contributed $304.8 million of revenue, Las Chispas $186.9 million, Palmarejo $159.6 million, Rochester $140.8 million, New Afton $133.3 million, Kensington $87.3 million and Wharf $72.9 million. Single-mine miners live and die by one ore body, one permit and one weather event. Seven operations across three metals means a grade problem at Rochester can be offset by Wharf nearly doubling its output, which is precisely what happened this quarter.

The balance sheet has changed character just as sharply. Cash reached 1.1 billion dollars at the end of June, nearly ten times the prior-year quarter end and double the level at the end of 2025, against total borrowings of 705.3 million dollars made up of the 2029 and 2032 senior notes and a small residue of finance leases, with a 1.0 billion dollar revolving facility signed on March 20, 2026 sitting entirely undrawn. Interest expense in the quarter was $11.0 million against income from operations of $216.5 million. Whatever else this company faces, the lenders are not going to be the ones to force the issue.

That is what allowed management to start returning capital for the first time. Since the enhanced programme began in mid-May, 6.7 million shares have been repurchased for $121 million through July 31, an inaugural semi-annual dividend of $0.02 a share was paid in June, and $39 million of capital leases were eliminated during the quarter. For a company whose history is one of issuing equity, buying it back is a meaningful change of direction, and it is the clearest signal available about what management thinks the shares are worth.

The forward numbers are the reason they can. Full-year 2026 guidance now points to roughly 690,000 ounces of gold, 20 million ounces of silver and 45 million pounds of copper, producing adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization of about $2.3 billion against $1.0 billion in 2025, and free cash flow near $1.5 billion against $666 million, with a year-end cash position approaching $2.0 billion. The year is back-weighted, so most of that is still ahead. If it lands, the balance sheet at the end of this year looks nothing like the one that started it.

Bear Case

HL is the closest listed comparison that reports on the same basis, and the comparison is not flattering. HL turned $1,573 million of trailing revenue into a 43.6% operating margin while growing 66.3%. SCCO, larger and copper-weighted, runs a 56.9% operating margin on $15,788 million of revenue growing 32.8%. Coeur's trailing operating margin of about 38.7% sits below both. In a business where every producer sells into the same price, the margin gap is the cost gap, and being the higher-cost operator in a commodity is the one competitive position that cannot be fixed with better management.

The cycle is also turning while the valuation assumes it will not. Average realized prices in the June quarter fell to 4,140 dollars an ounce for gold and 71.18 dollars an ounce for silver, down 6% and 14% from the March quarter, and June's own realizations of 3,823 dollars and 62.84 dollars were the lowest of the year. Silver supplied 30% of revenue in the quarter, so a 14% quarterly decline in that price is not a rounding item. The company's own 10-K is unusually candid about why these prices move: it observes that a recent silver move did not reflect changes in the underlying fundamentals that typically drive changes in the price of silver, including supply and demand, and warns that Gold and silver prices may fluctuate widely due to numerous factors, such as U.S. dollar strength or weakness, global political and economic conditions, demand, investor sentiment, inflation or deflation.

Against that, the price asks for persistence. Roughly 18 times its operating income for the twelve months to March 31, 2026 implies growth held at the ceiling the business can self-fund for about 10.4 years. Only around 15% of comparable fast-growers held that pace for that long. Worth stating plainly: the peer multiple range could not be read here, so the case for calling this assumption reasonable rests on fewer reference points than it appears to, and a thinner read is a weaker claim rather than a milder one. What follows is arithmetic. No family of valuation method reaches this price. The price sits about 2.3 times above where the asset-value methods land, about 69% above the earnings-power methods and about 42% above the peer-multiple methods, and there is no forward-growth read to argue the other side.

The dilution deserves its own paragraph because it is easy to lose inside per-share figures. The share count has compounded at about 27.6% a year since early 2022, the consequence of paying for both acquisitions in stock; in the New Gold transaction each share was exchanged for 0.4959 Coeur shares when the deal closed in late March 2026. The buyback that began in mid-May has retired 6.7 million shares. Set that against the count needed to buy two companies and it is a gesture rather than a reversal. Existing holders own a much smaller slice of a much larger business, which is a fine trade if the assets were bought well and a permanent loss if they were not.

Acquisition accounting is currently obscuring how much was actually earned. The June quarter carried $256.0 million of amortization and a $140 million non-cash charge arising from purchase price allocation on Rainy River's stockpile inventory, which is why income from operations came to $216.5 million on revenue of $1,085.6 million. Those charges are non-cash and they will run off. But they also mean that the trailing profitability the valuation rests on describes a period before the two Canadian mines were consolidated, and the ramp at both is already running slower than planned: partial-year guidance was cut at New Afton's C-Zone and at Rainy River's underground operations, even as the five legacy mines were left unchanged.

The last point is the one that governs everything else. Peak earnings in a commodity business are not sustainable earnings. This company is guiding to record results in a year when its own realized prices are falling, which works only because volume is rising fast enough to offset them. Volume growth from an acquisition happens once.

Valuation

Something unusual shows up as soon as the price is turned into an assumption. Paying about 18 times its operating income for the twelve months to March 31, 2026 implies operating growth running at the ceiling the business can fund from its own returns for roughly 10.4 years, computed against a 14.2% cost of capital. That discount rate is high, as it should be for a leveraged bet on metal prices, and the answer is sensitive to it: move the cost of capital by a point and the implied horizon shifts by around 2.1 years.

Ten years is a long time for a miner, and the reference points that exist do not support it comfortably. The pace itself is inside what the company has recently delivered, so the demand is not on the rate. It is on the duration, and only about 15% of comparable fast-growers sustained that level for that long. The peer multiple range could not be read here, which means the assessment rests on fewer checks than usual; that narrows the claim rather than softening it. Taken together the requirement reads as elevated, above what the fundamentals comfortably support.

One detail cuts the other way and is worth naming. The margin embedded in the price, around 21.3%, sits well below the 38.7% trailing operating margin the business has been earning. In other words the market is not assuming today's exceptional profitability persists. It is assuming something more modest persists for a very long time. That is a different bet, and a less obviously fragile one, though duration is the harder of the two things to be right about.

The methods themselves are unanimous in a way that is rare. Not one family reaches this price. The price sits about 2.3 times above where the asset-value methods land, about 69% above the earnings-power methods and about 42% above the peer-multiple methods, and there is no forward-growth read here at all. Where the individual approaches get their answers is instructive: the peer-multiple comparison blends a static sector earnings multiple with the company's own trailing one and holds the sector reference flat as its base case, while the enterprise-value comparison applies the sector's own multiple to about $1.30 billion of trailing earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization. A capitalization of free cash flow at the required return lands in the same neighbourhood. When every lens agrees and the price sits above all of them, the premium is not a disagreement between methods; it is a view about metal prices that none of them holds.

Cohort position sharpens rather than softens that. HL earns a 43.6% operating margin on $1,573 million of trailing revenue and SCCO a 56.9% margin on $15,788 million, both above Coeur's roughly 38.7%. Paying a premium to methods that already look generous, for the higher-cost operator in the group, is the specific trade on offer.

The balance sheet is the strongest part of the story and it genuinely bounds the downside. Cash stood near 1.1 billion dollars at the end of June against total borrowings of 705.3 million dollars, principally the 2029 and 2032 senior notes, with a 1.0 billion dollar revolving facility undrawn. Interest expense of $11.0 million in the quarter against income from operations of $216.5 million leaves an enormous amount of room. What the balance sheet cannot do is defend the multiple. It ensures the company survives a downturn in metal prices; it says nothing about what the equity is worth on the way through one.

Catalysts

The August 5, 2026 release reset the year in both directions at once. Full-year guidance now points to approximately 690,000 ounces of gold, 20 million ounces of silver and 45 million pounds of copper, generating adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization of roughly $2.3 billion against $1.0 billion in 2025, free cash flow near 1.5 billion dollars against 666 million, and a year-end balance approaching 2.0 billion dollars. The five legacy operations were left on their prior guidance, while partial-year ranges at New Afton and Rainy River were refined downward to reflect slower ramp-up at New Afton's C-Zone and at Rainy River's underground operations. The year is explicitly back-weighted, so the December quarter carries most of the test.

Capital returns are the newest variable and the one with a visible cadence. The enhanced programme began in mid-May and had repurchased 6.7 million shares for $121 million through July 31, alongside an inaugural semi-annual dividend of $0.02 a share paid in June and the elimination of $39 million of capital leases during the quarter. With guidance pointing at close to 2.0 billion dollars on the balance sheet by the year end, the pace of repurchase from here is a direct read on how management weighs buying its own shares against holding the proceeds.

Integration is the third thing to watch, and it now has a track record to judge against. The New Gold acquisition closed in late March 2026, with each New Gold share exchanged for 0.4959 Coeur shares, and the June quarter was the first full period of contribution from New Afton and Rainy River. Rainy River alone produced $304.8 million of revenue in the quarter. Against that, the guidance revision at both Canadian mines came within a single quarter of taking them over. Whether the next quarter brings the ramp back onto its original schedule or moves it again is the cleanest available evidence on how well the enlarged company is being run.

Peer Cohorts (Per Segment, With Filing Citations)

Core business (reported)

• PAAS (Pan American Silver Corp.)
• FY2025 40-F: …search for ore. Evaluation expenditures are incurred to establish the technical and commercial viability of mineral deposits and typically include costs associated with determining optimal methods of extraction and metallurgical and treatment processes, permitting, and preparing economic evaluations. Exploration…
• FY2025 40-F: 7. MANAGEMENT OF CAPITAL The Company's objective when managing its capital is to maintain its ability to continue as a going concern while at the same time maximizing the growth of its business and providing returns to its shareholders. The Company's capital structure consists of shareholders' equity (comprising…
• HL (HECLA MINING COMPANY)
• FY2025 10-K: …losses, respectively, as part of the line item fair value adjustments, net on our statement of consolidated operations and comprehensive income (loss). Note 4: Business Segments, Sales of Products and Significant Customers F- 13 We discover, acquire and develop mines and other mineral interests and produce and market…
• FY2025 10-K: …our debt impose restrictions on our operations. 3 PART I Item 1. Business For information regarding the organization of our business segments and our significant customers, see Note 4 of Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements. Information set forth in Items 1A and 2 below are incorporated by reference into this…
• HMY (HARMONY GOLD MINING COMPANY LIMITED)
• FY2025 20-F: …- Holistic health and wellness " on pages 141 to 153 . Mining companies face strong competition and industry consolidation The mining industry is competitive in all of its phases. We compete with other mining companies and individuals for specialised equipment, components and supplies necessary for exploration and…
• FY2025 20-F: . These factors could materially and adversely affect our financial and operating results. We compete with mining and other companies for key human resources with critical skills and our inability to retain key personnel could have an adverse e ffect on our business The risk of losing senior management or being unable…
• AGI (ALAMOS GOLD INC.)
• FY2025 40-F: : there is sufficient geologic certainty of converting a mineral deposit into a proven and probable reserve. There is a history of conversion to reserves at operating mines; (ii) scoping, pre-feasibility or feasibility: there is a scoping study, pre-feasibility or preliminary feasibility study that demonstrates the…
• FY2025 40-F: …income when control has been transferred to the customer. The Company recognizes the time value of money, where there is a significant financing component and the period between the payment by the customer and the transfer of the contracted goods exceeds one year. Interest expense on deferred revenue is recognized in…
• SCCO (SOUTHERN COPPER CORPORATION)
• FY2025 10-K: EPORTING SEGMENTS: ​ Our management divides Southern Copper into three reportable segments and manages each as a separate segment. ​ The three segments identified are groups of individual mines, each of which constitutes an operating segment with similar economic characteristics, product types, processes and support…
• FY2025 10-K: …recorded as revenue of our Mexican mines. The Mexican open-pit operations produce copper and zinc, with production of by-products of molybdenum, silver and other materials. ​ 3. Mexican underground mining operations, which include five underground mines that produce zinc, copper, lead, silver and gold; and a zinc…
• NEXA (NEXA RESOURCES S.A.)
• FY2025 20-F: …corresponding intercompany purchases; both are calculated on an arm's length basis to evaluate each segment's performance individually and are eliminated in consolidation. The profitability of our mining segment depends primarily on prevailing world prices for the metals we produce and on our unit cost to produce…
• FY2025 20-F: …by the United States or from the potential imposition of import tariffs on zinc or copper. The primary impact observed continues to be exchange rate volatility, driven by U.S. economic policy announcements and ongoing geopolitical tensions. 2 Information by business segment Business segment definition The Company's…
• CCJ (Cameco Corp)
• FY2025 40-F: …in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act. Emerging growth company ☐ If an emerging growth company that prepares its financial statements in accordance with U.S. GAAP, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting…
• FY2025 40-F: …99.8 Certification of Chief Executive Officer pursuant to Section 906 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 99.9 Certification of Chief Financial Officer pursuant to Section 906 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 99.10 Consent of Alain D. Renaud, P. Geo. 99.11 Consent of Biman Bharadwaj, P. Eng. 99.12 Consent of Scott…

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.