Core Natural Resources, Inc. (CNR): what the price requires

At today's price, Core Natural Resources, Inc. (CNR) is priced for -1.7% 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 · Source: https://boothcheck.com/report/CNR

Headline

FieldValue
TickerCNR
CompanyCore Natural Resources, Inc.
Current price$83.92/sh
CompositionPower Generation 45% / Industrial 23% / Metallurgical 32% / Third-Party Terminal Revenue 1% / Other Revenue 0%

What The Price Requires (Inversion)

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

FieldValue
Inversion basiswhole-company
Operating margin needed1.6%
Operating margin (mid-cycle)9.9%
Margin compression implied-8.3pp
Trailing margin (depressed year)-1.2%
Implied growth-1.7%
Multiple paid10x mid-cycle operating income

The operating-margin requirement is derived from the framework's value band at year 6, a separately labeled basis from the headline growth/duration solve.

Solve inputs: computed at a 9.7% cost of capital with 4% terminal growth over a 5-year stage; each 1pp of cost of capital moves the implied operating-profit growth ~5pp.

How unusual the bet is: within-range (limited comparison data)

ReferenceValue
implied end-window share0%

Valuation X-Ray

The price is justified by relative-multiple and growth-DCF; earnings-power land below the price.

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.

FamilyMedian price/FVModelsReads
Asset1.30x3expensive
Earnings1.76x3expensive
Relative0.68x3justifies
Growth0.69x3justifies

Families that justify the price: Relative, Growth Families that call it expensive: Earnings

The models below discount at their own flat-beta convention rates (cost of equity 9.3%, WACC 8.6%); the inversion above states its own rate.

Per-Model Detail (n=12)

ModelFamilyFVPrice/FVApplicableMethodology
DCF Perpetual GrowthGrowth$170.850.49xyesFCF base $0.2B, growth 25% (input: historical growth), terminal g 4.0%, WACC 8.6%, 5yr projection
DCF Exit MultipleGrowth$110.290.76xyesExit EV/EBITDA: 4.0x / 7.8x / 12.8x (bear / base = today's held flat / bull), 5yr
Relative ValuationRelative$124.320.68xyesP/S fallback (negative EPS): Sector P/S 1.5x × TTM revenue — excluded from consensus
Simple DDMGrowth——no—
Two-Stage DDMGrowth——no—
Simple Excess ReturnAsset$71.621.17xyesReference only (book value floor): BV/sh $71.62, ROE negative
Two-Stage Excess ReturnAsset$64.461.30xyesReference only (book value with convergence): BV/sh $71.62, ROE converges to ke
Discounted Future Market CapGrowth$121.770.69xyesRev $4.2B, growth 30% (input: historical growth; tapered), Terminal P/S: 0.8x / 1.0x / 1.2x (bear / base = today's held flat / bull, cap 6x)
Peter Lynch Fair ValueRelative$0.00—noNegative/zero EPS — earnings-based value floored at $0
Margin TrajectoryGrowth——no—
Earnings Power ValueEarnings$7.2511.58xyesNormalized EBIT (5y avg op income, one-time charges added back) $0.04B × (1−21%) / WACC 8.6% → EPV (no growth)
Residual IncomeAsset——no—
Graham NumberAsset——no—
EV/EBITDA RelativeRelative$86.250.97xyesEBITDA $0.55B × sector EV/EBITDA 8.0x
FCF YieldEarnings$51.251.64xyesFCF $241.9M / Kₑ 9.3% — zero-growth perpetuity
SBC-Adj FCF YieldEarnings$47.611.76xyesSBC-adj FCF $0.22B (FCF $0.24B − SBC $0.02B) capitalized at Kₑ
Ben Graham FormulaEarnings——no—
ROIC-Justified P/BAsset$5.8714.30xyesBV $71.62 × (ROIC 0.7% / WACC 8.6%)
P/Sales SectorRelative$124.320.68xyesRevenue $4.23B × sector P/S 1.5x
PEG Fair ValueRelative——no—
Earnings YieldEarnings——no—
Funds From Operations MultipleRelative——no—
Clinical Phase NPVGrowth——no—
MertonAsset——no—
V5 Mechanical———no—

Solvency

FieldValue
Net cash$9.7m
Net debt / NOPAT (after-tax)-0.03x (net cash)
Net debt / operating income (pre-tax)-0.02x (net cash)
Interest coverage12.5x
Share count CAGR (dilution)10.2%
Burning cashno

Leverage and coverage are computed on normalized mid-cycle operating income (mid-cycle margin 9.9%); the trailing year was depressed.

Bullet Takeaways

Core Natural Resources is the coal producer created by the January 2025 merger of CONSOL Energy and Arch Resources, and the recent earnings line is bending up: first-quarter 2026 net income of $21.0 million and diluted EPS of $0.41 reversed a prior-year loss, on revenue of $1.08 billion and adjusted EBITDA of $208.5 million.

The improvement is part cycle and part self-help. Metallurgical coal pricing and volumes rose while general and administrative costs fell about $53 million as one-time merger expenses rolled off, and the company is targeting cash SG&A near $100 million against roughly $153 million in 2024.

The balance sheet is clean for a cyclical, essentially net cash with interest coverage near 9.7x and book value around $72 per share against an $83.34 price. The catch is that the whole thesis rides on coal prices, with thermal demand in structural decline and metallurgical demand tied to global steel.

Bull Case

The earnings trajectory is the cleanest way into this name, because it has just turned. First-quarter 2026 produced revenue of $1.08 billion, net income of $21.0 million, and diluted EPS of $0.41, against a year-earlier loss of $1.38 per share, with adjusted EBITDA rising to $208.5 million. Two forces are pushing the line up at once. The first is price and mix: metallurgical coal pricing and volumes improved, and Core's met franchise is premium, with two longwall mines in the Leer Complex plus the Beckley, Mountain Laurel and Itmann continuous-miner mines in West Virginia producing a premium metallurgical product used in global steel (FY2025 10-K, accession 0001710366-26-000007). The second is the merger itself working: consolidated 2025 revenues were $2.0 billion higher than 2024 as the legacy Arch operations folded in (accession 0001710366-26-000007), and general and administrative costs fell about $53 million as non-recurring merger expenses dropped out and headcount synergies began to appear.

The self-help has room to run, which is what separates this from a pure commodity bet. Management is guiding cash SG&A toward a top end near $100 million, down from roughly $153 million in 2024, so a large slice of cost is coming out independent of where coal prices go. Operating cash flow strengthened to $119.4 million in the quarter, comfortably funding $73.1 million of capital spending while still leaving room for $41.9 million of buybacks and a $0.10 dividend. That is the signature of a business that throws off cash through the cycle, and the balance sheet is built to take advantage of it: Core sits roughly net cash with gross debt near $455 million and interest coverage around 9.7x, so the cash flow goes to shareholders and the share count rather than to a lender.

The asset and cash-flow methods frame the upside. Book value is about $72 per share, and several of the cash-flow lenses land above the $83.34 price (June 27, 2026) even on conservative assumptions: the perpetual-growth DCF reaches into the $170s, the exit-multiple DCF lands near $110, and the relative reads on sales sit near $124. The company also has a flexible thermal book; one of its longwall mines produces a high-quality, high-calorific-value thermal product that competes effectively in seaborne markets (FY2025 10-K, accession 0001710366-26-000007), so it can chase export pricing rather than depend solely on a shrinking domestic power market. If metallurgical pricing holds and the synergy plan delivers, the normalized earnings power of the combined company is well above the trough the trailing numbers still carry, and the buyback compounds it on a falling share count.

Bear Case

Strip the merger story away and the price depends on one fragile assumption: that coal prices stay high enough to make the normalized earnings real. The trailing window still shows the trough, with a current operating margin slightly negative and a return on equity below the cost of equity, and the recent profit swing leans heavily on metallurgical pricing and volumes that the company does not control. Core spells out the pricing exposure directly, listing demand and supply in the regions it serves, competing coals from other basins, and the terms of longer-term contracts struck under different market conditions as the drivers of realized price (FY2025 10-K, accession 0001710366-26-000007). Metallurgical coal is tied to global steel demand, which is itself cyclical and concentrated in a few economies. The most fragile input baked into the price is a met-coal price that holds near recent levels; if seaborne met pricing rolls over, the EBITDA that justifies the valuation rolls with it.

The thermal side carries a structural, not cyclical, problem. Core acknowledges that the share of coal-fired electric power generation has declined and may continue to in the near term, particularly for older, less efficient generators, and that renewable-energy mandates could further cut demand for its coal (FY2025 10-K, accession 0001710366-26-000007). It adds that because thermal coal accounts for a significant portion of sales, results could be materially affected by the costs customers bear to control emissions (accession 0001710366-26-000007), and that natural gas prices plus new combined-cycle gas capacity pressure coal demand. The seaborne thermal pivot helps, but it competes against the same global oversupply that pressures everyone. A buyer is paying for a commodity in secular decline on one leg and full cyclical exposure on the other.

There is also a quality-of-earnings caveat worth naming. The recent quarter's improvement was flattered by one-time items the company itself flagged, including insurance recoveries related to prior operational disruptions and the roll-off of merger costs. Those do not repeat. The dilution from the merger pushed the share count up roughly 10% over the period, so per-share earnings have to climb against a larger base, and the trailing operating-income figures still carry merger-year distortion (the EDGAR trailing read and the record basis diverge sharply, a sign the period is not yet clean). The balance sheet is strong, which limits the downside, but the upside the price assumes requires met pricing, thermal export demand, and the full synergy run-rate to all hold together. That is a stack of commodity-dependent bets, and coal has a long history of disappointing the optimistic version.

Valuation

This is a cyclical valued in a trough year, so the methods scatter and the trailing earnings reads are unreliable. The earnings-based lenses that divide a five-year-average operating income by the cost of capital collapse to single digits, because that average spans loss years and the EPS is negative, which knocks out the Graham, earnings-yield, and PEG methods entirely. Those are not signal here; they are the math correctly refusing to value a business on a depressed average. The book-value floor is more useful: equity is about $72 per share, so at $83.34 the stock trades near 1.16x book, a modest premium for a producer that is roughly net cash. The cash-flow and sales-based methods land higher: the exit-multiple DCF near $110, the discounted future market cap near $121, the sector price-to-sales read near $124, and the perpetual-growth DCF, which extrapolates recent growth, into the $170s.

The honest read is that the central estimate depends almost entirely on what normalized EBITDA you believe. The annualized run-rate from the first quarter, roughly $208 million of adjusted EBITDA per quarter scaled up and adjusted for one-time items, plus the synergy plan taking cash SG&A toward $100 million, implies a normalized earnings power well above the trailing trough. Apply a mid-single-digit EV/EBITDA multiple appropriate for coal and the cash-flow methods near $110 to $124 are reasonable; apply the perpetual-growth assumption and you get the $170s. Given the net-cash balance sheet and the active buyback, the book-value floor near $72 and the EV/EBITDA-relative read near $86 bracket a defensible downside, while the upside rests on commodity pricing the company does not control. The valuation is not demanding on normalized numbers, but the word normalized is doing a lot of work in a name this cyclical.

Catalysts

First-quarter 2026 was the recent set-piece and it was the clearest evidence of the post-merger turn: revenue of $1.08 billion, net income of $21.0 million, and diluted EPS of $0.41 versus a prior-year loss of $1.38, with adjusted EBITDA of $208.5 million. Operating cash flow rose to $119.4 million, funding $73.1 million of capital spending, $41.9 million of share repurchases, and a $0.10 quarterly dividend. (Sources: Core Natural Resources Q1 2026 quarterly report via StockTitan; Q1 2026 earnings transcript via The Globe and Mail.)

The defining context is the January 2025 merger of equals between CONSOL Energy and Arch Resources that created the company. The synergy program is the most controllable catalyst from here: general and administrative costs fell about $53 million as one-time merger expenses rolled off, and management is targeting cash SG&A near $100 million against roughly $153 million in 2024, so further synergy capture should keep lifting margins independent of coal prices. (Sources: Core Natural Resources Q1 2026 results via StockTitan; merger-progress and capital-return detail via the company proxy coverage on StockTitan.)

The forward watch items are coal-price driven and cadence-driven: seaborne metallurgical coal pricing and volumes, which swing global steel demand into the result; thermal export demand against a declining domestic power market; the pace of buybacks given the net-cash balance sheet; and each quarterly print as a check on whether the synergy run-rate lands on target. The next quarterly result is the key near-term event. (Source: Core Natural Resources first-quarter 2026 commentary via StockTitan.)

Peer Cohorts (Per Segment, With Filing Citations)

High CV Thermal / PRB (reported)

Metallurgical (reported)

Core Marine Terminal (reported)

Methodology Note

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.

View the full interactive CNR report on boothcheck