Freeport-McMoRan Inc. (FCX): what the price assumes

In the published model solve dated 2026-Q2, anchored at $76.28, Freeport-McMoRan Inc. (FCX) is priced for today's economics sustained for ~7.3 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 2026-07-26.

Generated: 2026-08-30 · Source: https://boothcheck.com/report/FCX

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 12: derived from the framework's value band, a separate calculation — not part of the priced-in solve.

Solve inputs: computed at a 12.8% cost of capital; growth searched up to the 25% self-funding ceiling.

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

Valuation X-Ray

The price is justified by relative-multiple; asset-based/earnings-power/growth-DCF 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.

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

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=15)

Economic-Unit Decomposition (Sum Of The Parts)

One or more material disclosed units has unresolved economics. Unknown/general is not evidence of homogeneity: segment SOTP is primary but incomplete, consolidated cash flow may remain only a secondary cross-check when every unit shares an enterprise basis, and one sector multiple or target margin is withheld.

No total common-equity value is stated. One or more material units lack a supported unit value. The displayed values are an indicative subtotal; consolidated debt and cash cannot be applied to a fraction of the company.

Solvency

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

Bullet Takeaways

• Grasberg is the whole story: the Indonesian district produced Production from the Grasberg minerals district totaled 1.0 billion pounds of copper and 0.9 million ounces of gold in 2025 against 1.8 billion pounds of copper the year before, and the phased restart after the September 2025 mud rush is what the next two years turn on.
• PTFI's concentrate export licence expired on September 16, 2025 and was not renewed, so every ton of Indonesian concentrate must now pass through Freeport's own smelters, and the annual filing warns that if those facilities are not running when concentrate is available, PTFI could be required to reduce production.
• Watch the ramp of Production Blocks 2 and 3, restarted at the end of March 2026 and already meeting changed ground conditions after the months of inactivity, with Production Block 1S still queued behind it.

Bull Case

Valuing a copper miner turns on two numbers most industries never think about: what it costs to lift a pound of metal out of the ground, and how many pounds are left underneath. Everything else is downstream of those. A mine low on the cost curve keeps earning when the metal price falls, and a mine with decades of reserve life gets to do it again next cycle. Freeport organises itself along exactly those lines, into U.S. copper mines, South America operations, Indonesia operations and Molybdenum mines.

The American half is the quiet one, and quiet is the point. Bagdad, in Arizona, produced 149 million pounds of copper and 11 million pounds of molybdenum in 2025, against 146 million pounds of copper in each of the two prior years. Flat is not the interesting part. What sits underneath it is: We have defined an opportunity to more than double the concentrator capacity of the Bagdad operation. That is expansion on ground the company already holds, in a jurisdiction where the permitting risk is known rather than negotiated each year.

Demand is the other half of the cost-curve argument, and the company is unusually direct about why it thinks the metal matters. Fundamentals for copper are favorable, the annual filing says, with growing demand supported by copper's critical role in electrification initiatives, continued urbanization in developing countries, data centers and artificial intelligence (AI) growth, increased defense spending. Four separate demand pulls, none of them a substitute for the others, and none of them present together a decade ago.

Indonesia is where the optionality lives. In February 2026 Freeport and PTFI signed an understanding with the Indonesian government covering a life of resource extension of operating rights in the Grasberg minerals district, past the 2041 expiry currently on the books. Grasberg is not an ordinary asset, and the gap between rights that stop in 2041 and rights that run to depletion is measured in decades of copper and gold.

The near-term case rests on the restart working, and management has put its own arithmetic behind that: Consolidated operating cash flows are expected to approximate $8.7 billion for the year 2026, struck on a deck of 6.00 dollars a pound for copper, 4,500 dollars an ounce for gold and 25.00 dollars a pound for molybdenum. A forecast built on a mine still ramping carries a wide error bar, and the bear is right to say so. The bull's answer is that the orebody has not moved. Block caving is a sequencing problem rather than a geology problem, and At December 31, 2025, the Grasberg Block Cave underground mine had 470 open drawbells. The tons are still there. What was lost was time.

Bear Case

Run the price past every family of valuation method and not one of them reaches it. Book value plus excess profitability lands under. Peer multiples land under. Even the forward-growth methods, the ones allowed to credit expansion that has not happened yet, land under, and they are the closest of the four. Furthest away by a wide distance is the earnings-power lens, which simply capitalises what the business has actually earned and assumes no growth at all. On a cyclical, that particular gap is not automatically an indictment, because trailing earnings on a miner are a snapshot of one point on a price cycle. It does mean something narrower and harder to argue with: the price is being carried by growth, and by nothing else in the toolkit.

So how much growth. Today's price requires operating profit for the whole company to compound at roughly 21.1% a year for five years. The demanding part is persistence: among companies that have grown at this pace, only about 41% held it for that long. And the base being compounded from is a year in which Grasberg milled 138,100 metric tons of ore per day, against 208,400 metric tons the year before. The bull reads a depressed base as the opportunity. The bear reads it as the reason the compounding looks so achievable on paper.

Cost position is where the sector lens turns against the company. Freeport guides its South America operations to average unit net cash costs of about 2.60 dollars a pound for 2026. SCCO, mining the same metal in the same part of the world, reported operating cash cost net of by-product revenues of 0.58 dollars a pound in 2025, improved from 0.89 the year before, per its own annual filing. The two figures rest on different definitions and different orebodies, so the ratio between them is not a like-for-like ranking. Nobody reading them, though, concludes that Freeport is the low-cost producer in its own cohort. Low-cost producers are the ones that keep operating through the part of the cycle nobody is currently modelling.

Indonesia concentrates three risks into one geography. The export licence expired on September 16, 2025, and PTFI does not have export licenses for copper concentrate or anode slimes, which turns a smelter commissioning schedule into a hard production constraint. The February 2026 understanding on operating rights is an understanding, and the rights on the books still stop in 2041. And the protection behind the mud rush has a ceiling: the policies cover up to $1.0 billion in losses (subject to a limit of $0.7 billion on underground incidents), after a $0.5 billion deductible.

The balance sheet is not where this bear case lives, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest. Borrowings of 9.4 billion dollars set against 3.7 billion dollars of liquidity is not a stressed structure for a business this size, and the share count has barely moved in four years. What a strong balance sheet cannot do is shorten a ramp. It buys time. It does not buy tons.

Valuation

Today's price is paying for one thing above all others: that operating profit across the whole company compounds at roughly 21.1% a year over the next five years. Run the arithmetic backwards from $62.61 a share and 90.4 billion dollars of market value and that is what falls out. It is not a forecast, and it is not a target. It is the assumption a buyer inherits on day one.

Set against it, the map of methods is unusually one-sided. No family reaches the price. Book-value-plus-profitability lands beneath it, peer multiples land beneath it, and the growth methods, which are permitted to credit the future, come closest and still fall short. The approach that reaches furthest is a discounted cash-flow run that carries today's cash-profit multiple unchanged into its terminal year, which is to say the method most dependent on nothing changing. The one that falls shortest capitalises a multi-year average of operating profit with no growth credited whatsoever. The whole disagreement sits between those two, and the disagreement is the information rather than a defect in it.

Translated into mining terms, the growth requirement is a volume requirement. Grasberg's milling rate fell to 138,100 metric tons of ore per day in 2025 from 208,400 metric tons in 2024, and the restart that began at the end of March 2026 is what closes that gap. Recovering lost throughput does a large share of the compounding by itself. What the price does not answer is what happens in the back half of the window, once the recovery is banked and the growth has to come from new tons rather than restored ones.

Cohort position sharpens the question rather than softening it. SCCO reported operating cash cost net of by-product revenues of 0.58 dollars a pound in 2025; Freeport guides its South America division to roughly 2.60 dollars a pound this year. Different definitions, different orebodies, and still a clear ordering. A producer sitting higher on the cost curve has more torque to the copper price in both directions. That is a reasonable thing to own and a harder thing to own at a premium to every standard frame.

None of the balance-sheet arithmetic argues either way, which is itself worth saying. The latest quarterly filing reports consolidated debt of $9.4 billion and consolidated cash and cash equivalents of $3.7 billion, carrying a weighted-average interest rate of 5.2%, with 3.0 billion dollars of undrawn revolving capacity behind it. Strip out the borrowings that funded PTFI's new smelters and the company's own figure is Net debt totaled $2.4 billion. Share count has moved by less than half a percent a year since early 2022, so the dividend, split between a fixed quarterly base and a variable performance-linked half, is the return channel rather than repurchases. Solvency here does not shorten the growth requirement. It only guarantees the company gets a full cycle to meet it.

Catalysts

Second-quarter results landed on July 23, 2026, with revenue of $7.03 billion against a Q2 2026 revenue consensus of $6.75 billion. Two brokers moved the following day: RBC Capital lifted its target to $73 from $70, and Wells Fargo to $70 from $68. Both sit above where every family of valuation method in this report lands, and the difference is worth naming rather than reconciling away. The street is underwriting the Grasberg recovery and a firm copper deck; this framework measures the price against what the business has already demonstrated.

The operating calendar is set by the mine, not the calendar year. PTFI commenced initial ramp-up activities at the end of March 2026 in Production Blocks 2 and 3 and is advancing a planned future start-up of Production Block 1S alongside drainage and cave-management work. Because the export licence is gone, smelter commissioning and mine ramp now have to move in step, which makes each quarterly report a progress check on two schedules at once rather than one.

Capital return runs on a declared schedule. The board declared $0.15 a share on March 25, 2026, half of it a fixed quarterly base and half a variable performance-based amount, paid on May 1. It declared the same figure again on June 23, 2026, payable August 3. The variable half is the one worth tracking: it moves with what the operations actually generate, which makes it the cleanest public read on how the restart is going.

Peer Cohorts (Per Segment, With Filing Citations)

Morenci / Cerro Verde +3 more (reported)

• SCCO (SOUTHERN COPPER CORPORATION)
• FY2025 10-K: …​ L. Miguel Palomino Bonilla ​ /s/ JAVIER ARRIGUNAGA GOMEZ DEL CAMPO ​ /s/ ENRIQUE CASTILLO SANCHEZ MEJORADA Javier Arrigunaga Gomez del Campo ​ Enrique Castillo Sanchez Mejorada ​ ​ ​ /s/ JOSE PEDRO VALENZUELA RIONDA ​ ​ Jose Pedro Valenzuela Rionda ​ ​ ​ ​ Date: February 27, 2026 ​ ​ 204
• FY2025 10-K: This contract commits to supply 611,400 MWh of power per year to some of the Company´s Mexican operations for 20 years . This agreement started in the third quarter of 2024. In 2025, Parque Eolico de Fenicias supplied approximately 98.1 % of its power output to IMMSA; compared to 58.6 % in 2024. ​ The Company sold…
• NEXA (NEXA RESOURCES S.A.)
• FY2025 20-F: …a Business Administration degree from California State University, as well as an MBA from The Wharton School. He also graduated from the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School. Mauro Davi Boletta. Mr. Boletta has been our Senior Vice President of Smelting Operations and Commercial since 2016. Mr.…
• FY2025 20-F: …Development, Construction, Capital Projects, Portfolio Management, and Project Management Office. He has worked for well-known companies such as Fiat Powertrain Technologies, ArcelorMittal Long Carbon Americas, Anglo American Nickel, Niobium and Phosphates, and CMOC, where he had the opportunity to collaborate with…
• B (BARRICK MINING CORP)
• FY2025 40-F: …the registrant was required to submit such files). Yes x No ¨ Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is an emerging growth company as defined 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…
• FY2025 40-F: …entitled "Ratings" in Exhibit 99.1) is incorporated by reference into Barrick's Registration Statements on Form F-3 (File No. 333-206417), Form S-8 (File Nos. 333-121500, 333-131715, 333-135769, 333-224560) and Form F-10 (File No. 333-287021). SIGNATURES Pursuant to the requirements of the Exchange Act, the…
• NEM (NEWMONT CORPORATION)
• FY2025 10-K: …trucks, each with 150-tonne payload. Newmont Suriname includes processing facilities that utilize a conventional gold mill, primary crusher and processing plant, consisting of a comminution plant, including gravity and cyanide leach processes, with recovery by carbon-in-leach, elution, electrowinning and induction…
• FY2025 10-K: …Depending on the plans that may ultimately be agreed with regulators, a material adjustment to the remediation liability may be required. Other Legal Matters Newmont Corporation, as well as Newmont Canada Corporation, and Newmont Canada FN Holdings ULC - 100 % Newmont Owned Kirkland Lake Gold Inc., which was acquired…
• KGC (KINROSS GOLD CORP)
• FY2025 40-F: . 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 standards† provided pursuant to…
• FY2025 40-F: …report on Form 40-F, include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to our guidance for production, cost guidance, including production costs of sales, all-in sustaining cost of sales, and capital expenditures; anticipated returns of capital to shareholders, including the declaration, payment, increase and…
• GFI (Gold Fields Limited)
• FY2025 20-F: …period Performance enablers • Incrementally expand the processing facility from 7.5Mt per annum to 10Mt per annum (2025: 9.5Mtpa - 9.75Mtpa) • Increase material movement from 48Mt per annum in 2024 to 75Mt per annum in 2026 • Accelerate delivery of higher-grade material from Golden Highway and Gilmour deposits •…
• FY2025 20-F: …through updated performance measures and the adoption of the 2025 Share Equity plan, which utilises on-market share purchases to remove dilution and support shareholder alignment. In response to shareholder and broader market feedback, matching shares were also removed during the year, further simplifying the plan…
• AGI (ALAMOS GOLD INC.)
• FY2025 40-F: …term loan and revolving credit facility, convertible debenture and obligation related to gold prepayment, all acquired through the Argonaut Transaction, were repaid using the Facility and existing cash. Total repayment of debt and accrued interest assumed on the Argonaut Transaction during the year ended December 31,…
• FY2025 40-F: …3.5 5.6 Issuance of shares for dividend reinvestment and share purchase plan ("DRIP") 2.6 5.8 Issuance of shares for employee share purchase plan ("ESPP") 6.6 6.3 Transfer from contributed surplus of share-based compensation redeemed 1.0 3.0 Issuance of shares through flow-through share agreements - 6.5 Exercise of…
• PAAS (Pan American Silver Corp.)
• FY2025 40-F: …domiciled in Canada, and its office is at Suite 2100 - 733 Seymour Street, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6B 0S6. The Company is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: PAAS) (the "TSX"), and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: PAAS) (the "NYSE"). Pan American engages in silver and gold mining and related…
• FY2025 40-F: Pepa project for net proceeds of $ 40 million and reported a gain on disposition of $ 7 million. The associated non-controlling interest of $ 8 million was derecognized upon disposition. PAN AMERICAN SILVER CORP. 34 Notes to the Consolidated Financial Statements As at December 31, 2025 and December 31, 2024, and for…

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.
• Economic-unit decomposition (SOTP): each disclosed business unit is assigned its native valuation basis before any multiple is applied. Operating units are valued on enterprise value; funded financial units are valued on their own common equity, because their borrowings fund earning assets rather than levering the parent. A company total is stated only once every material unit carries a supported value and the parent capital bridge reconciles.
• 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.