Gold Fields Limited (GFI): what the price assumes

In the published model solve dated 2026-Q2, anchored at $45.83, Gold Fields Limited (GFI) is priced for +21.7% growth. 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 · Exported: 2026-08-31 · Source: https://boothcheck.com/report/GFI

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 9.9% cost of capital with 4% terminal growth over a 5-year stage.

How unusual the bet is: n/a

Valuation X-Ray

Every valuation family lands below the price. The price therefore sits beyond what those standard frames encode.

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 call it expensive: Asset, Earnings, Relative, Growth

The models below discount at their own flat-beta convention rates (cost of equity 9.3%, WACC 8.8%); the inversion above states its own rate.

Per-Model Detail (n=15)

Solvency

Bullet Takeaways

• Revenue rose 68% in 2025 to 8,751 million dollars on 16% more gold-equivalent ounces sold and a 45% higher realised gold price, while all-in sustaining cost net of by-products moved only 1%, from 1,629 dollars an ounce to 1,645 dollars an ounce.
• The company's own 2026 guidance points the other way on costs, at 1,800 to 2,000 dollars an ounce of all-in sustaining cost, so the widest part of the margin may already be behind it.
• Ghana is the jurisdiction to watch: the royalty Gold Fields pays there went from 0.5% of revenue in 2024 to 2.4% in 2025, further royalty legislation arrived in December 2025, and the Damang lease expires on 18 April 2026 with a transition team already preparing the mine for transfer to the State.

Bull Case

Every backward-looking way of valuing this company lands under the current price. Book value with profitability, capitalised earnings power, peer multiples: all of them sit below where the shares trade, and only the methods that project growth forward reach it. For a gold producer that spread says something specific. The market is not paying for the ounces already in the ground at yesterday's economics. It is paying for what those ounces earn if the current price environment holds.

The 2025 accounts show why anyone would take that bet. Revenue rose 68%, from 5,202 million dollars in 2024 to 8,751 million dollars in 2025, on 16% more gold-equivalent ounces sold and a 45% higher realised gold price. Over the same year, all-in sustaining cost net of by-product revenue barely shifted, from 1,629 dollars an ounce to 1,645 dollars an ounce. Selling price moved a great deal. The cost of getting the metal out of the ground barely moved at all. In a business where the product is identical to everyone else's, that gap is the entire profit, and it widened by more in one year than most miners manage in a decade of operational work.

The cash arrived where it should have. Net borrowings excluding lease liabilities fell 41%, from 1,635 million dollars at the end of 2024 to 959 million dollars at the end of 2025, and the cash balance rose to 1,442 million dollars. Adjusted free cash flow rose 391% to 2,970 million dollars on the company's own measure. A gold miner that converts a strong price year into debt reduction rather than into a fresh round of marginal projects is behaving unusually well, and the record shows it doing exactly that.

It has also been spending where the assets are already proven. Gold Fields took full ownership of the Gruyere mine in Western Australia through the acquisition of its joint venture partner Gold Road on 26 September 2025, and put a A$1,250 million syndicated term loan facility in place with Commonwealth Bank of Australia on 2 December 2025 to fund it. Gruyere's own gold sales rose 29% in 2025, from 143,800 ounces to 184,900 ounces, on higher tonnes milled. Buying the other half of a mine you already operate is the lowest-risk ounce a miner can add. Behind that sits attributable measured and indicated mineral resources, exclusive of reserves, of roughly 47.0 million ounces of gold at 31 December 2025.

The distribution policy changed to match. From the final 2025 declaration the base dividend targets 35% of free cash flow before discretionary growth investment, with a floor of 0.50 dollars a share a year paid in two instalments. That is a commitment to hand part of the cycle back rather than reinvest all of it at the top. The obvious objection, that costs are guided higher for 2026, is fair and the company says so itself. What the objection does not undo is a balance sheet that entered this year with far less on it than the one that entered last.

Bear Case

Almost none of last year's improvement was earned underground. Gold Fields sold 16% more gold-equivalent ounces in 2025 than in 2024, which is real operational work, and it received 45% more for each of them, which is not work at all. The second number is close to three times the first, and it comes from a market nobody at the company influences. Every commodity producer's best years look like this, and it is precisely why a best year is the wrong thing to extend forward.

Management's own guidance says the cost side has already turned. For 2026 it expects all-in sustaining cost of 1,800 to 2,000 dollars an ounce and all-in cost of 2,075 to 2,300 dollars an ounce, against 1,645 dollars an ounce of all-in sustaining cost achieved in 2025. Even the friendly end of that range is a rise of roughly a tenth. Gruyere shows the mechanism: cost of sales there before amortisation and depreciation rose 113%, from A$172 million to A$366 million, on higher contractor mining rates and additional plant maintenance. Depreciation across the group rose 47%, from 627 million dollars to 920 million dollars, because the assets being consumed to produce those extra ounces are being consumed faster.

Then there is where the mines sit. The royalty Gold Fields pays in Ghana went from 0.5% of revenue in 2024 to 2.4% in 2025, further royalty legislation was introduced there in December 2025, and the government has floated a policy requiring large-scale miners to sell a fifth of production as doré to the State at a discounted price. The Damang lease expires on 18 April 2026, and a government-appointed transition team is already preparing that mine for transfer of ownership. Asanko has gone already, sold to Galiano Gold for 85 million dollars settled upfront plus deferred and contingent amounts. None of this is a scandal. It is the ordinary experience of holding long-lived assets inside sovereigns that also want the gold price, and it compounds quietly in the royalty line.

The price allows for none of that. It requires operating profit to keep compounding at roughly 8% a year across a five-year stage, on top of a year that was itself a record built mostly by the metal price. That is the part worth sitting with: the growth is asked for on top of the peak, not from a trough. And the valuation methods split accordingly. Asset value, capitalised earnings and peer multiples all land under the price. Only the forward-growth approach gets there. Whatever defends this price, it is not the balance sheet and it is not what has already been banked.

Concentration finishes the picture. Copper and silver contributed 228.1 million dollars and 116.7 million dollars of revenue respectively in 2025, against 8,751 million dollars in total. There is no meaningful second product to lean on. The bull says the resource base is deep and the debt is nearly gone, and both statements are true. Neither one sets the gold price.

Valuation

What today's price requires is not a recovery. It is continuation. The price embeds operating profit compounding at roughly 8% a year across a five-year stage, discounted at about a 9.4% cost of capital with 4% growth assumed beyond it. That requirement is unusually touchy about the discount rate: move the rate by a single point and the growth it demands moves by about six. For most businesses an 8% demand would be unremarkable. For a gold producer it collapses into a statement about one variable, because the ounce count moves slowly and the realised metal price does not.

Some sense of that variable comes from the peer filings. NEM disclosed provisionally priced gold sales carrying an average provisional price of 4,332 dollars an ounce as of December 31, 2025. Gold Fields brought its own metal to surface for 1,645 dollars an ounce in that same year, net of copper and silver credits. The distance between those two figures is not an operating achievement anyone can repeat on demand. It is a market condition, and the current price asks for it to hold and then widen.

The methods used to triangulate a value split cleanly along that line. Asset value, capitalised earnings power and peer multiples all land below the price. Only the forward-growth approach reaches it, and it reaches it by carrying the current earning power forward rather than by finding anything cheap in what already exists. That pattern is the signature of a durability premium: the price is defended by an expectation about the next several years, not by what the company owns or by what it has already earned.

The balance sheet no longer argues with that expectation, which was not true a year ago. Net borrowings excluding lease liabilities stood at 959 million dollars at 31 December 2025, down 41% over the year, against a cash balance of 1,442 million dollars. Interest is covered many times over. The distribution policy adopted with the final 2025 declaration sets the base dividend at 35% of free cash flow before discretionary growth investment, with a floor of 0.50 dollars a share annually, which routes part of any further upcycle to holders instead of into the ground.

One figure frames all of it. Gold accounts for about 96% of what this company sells, with copper and silver together contributing a low single-digit share of 2025 revenue. There is no second business here absorbing a shock in the first. Whatever the price is underwriting, it is underwriting one metal, produced in Ghana, Peru, Chile, Australia and South Africa, at a cost the company guides higher for the coming year.

Catalysts

The Ghanaian calendar is the nearest thing to a scheduled event. The Damang mining lease expires on 18 April 2026, and Gold Fields has been working with a government-appointed transition team to prepare the mine for transfer of ownership to the State, having restarted mining there in May 2025. Separately, legislation introduced in December 2025 raises mineral royalties, and a proposed policy would require large-scale producers to sell a fifth of output as doré to the Government at a discounted price. The royalty rate the company actually paid in Ghana already moved from 0.5% of revenue in 2024 to 2.4% in 2025, so the direction is not hypothetical.

Guidance for 2026 is the other marker. The company expects 2.400 to 2.600 million ounces against 2.438 million delivered in 2025, with all-in sustaining cost of 1,800 to 2,000 dollars an ounce and all-in cost of 2,075 to 2,300 dollars an ounce. Those figures assume 16.00 rand to the dollar, 0.70 dollars per Australian dollar and 0.73 Canadian dollars to the U.S. dollar, so a currency move alone can push the cost line through the range without anything changing at the mines. Gruyere now reports at 100% following the acquisition of Gold Road on 26 September 2025, which lifts the production line and the cost line together.

The distribution change lands in the same window. Beginning with the final 2025 declaration, the base dividend targets 35% of free cash flow before discretionary growth investment, with a minimum of 0.50 dollars a share a year paid semi-annually. Because the policy keys off free cash flow rather than accounting profit, the size of the next declaration is a direct read on how much of the 2025 cash generation the company treats as repeatable.

Peer Cohorts (Per Segment, With Filing Citations)

Core business (reported)

• KGC (KINROSS GOLD CORP)
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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: …obstacles to our ability to conduct our operations and develop our projects, which may result in a material adverse impact on our business, financial position, results of operations, and growth prospects. Further, the interest rate of Newmont's $1 billion aggregate principal amount of 2.6% Sustainability-Linked…
• FY2025 10-K: …or renewing collective bargaining or certain labor agreements, workforce unionization, or demand for profit sharing; • Disadvantages of competing against companies from countries that are not subject to the rigorous laws and regulations of the U.S. or other jurisdictions, including without limitation, the U.S.…
• 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…
• 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…
• BVN (BUENAVENTURA MINING CO INC)
• FY2025 20-F: …services. - Rental of mining concessions (until July 2024). - Holding of investment in shares. - Industrial activities. - Purchase and sale of mineral (Trading). F-93 Table of Contents Notes to the consolidated financial statements (continued) ​ The accounting policies used by the Group in reporting segments…
• FY2025 20-F: …borrowing costs. Inventories are classified as current or non - current depending on the length of time that management estimates will be needed to reach the production state of concentrate extraction for each mining unit. The current portion of the inventories is determined based on the expected amounts to be…
• 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…

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.