VALE S.A. (VALE): what the price assumes
The priced-in model claim for VALE S.A. (VALE) is temporarily suppressed because its solve record is unavailable. The separately dated narrative remains a snapshot, not a current quote.
Generated: 2026-07-25 · Exported: 2026-07-26 · Source: https://boothcheck.com/report/VALE
Headline
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Ticker | VALE |
| Company | VALE S.A. |
| Sector / Industry | Basic Materials |
| Current price | $14.80/sh |
What The Price Assumes (Inversion)
The assumption today's price embeds, recovered by inverting the valuation.
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Inversion basis | whole-company |
| Operating margin (value-band context) | 10.1% |
| Operating margin today | 33.0% |
| Margin compression (value-band) | -22.9pp |
| Multiple paid | 4x operating income |
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.
The price sits below what even a 5%/yr operating-profit decline would warrant; the inversion reports a bound, not a solved growth path.
Solve inputs: computed at a 10.9% cost of capital with 4% terminal growth over a 5-year stage.
How unusual the bet is: within-range (limited comparison data)
| Reference | Value |
|---|---|
| vs own history | -0.31σ |
| 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 | 2.95x | 5 | expensive |
| Earnings | 1.76x | 2 | expensive |
| Relative | 1.52x | 3 | expensive |
| Growth | 0.56x | 3 | justifies |
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 6.6%); the inversion above states its own rate.
Per-Model Detail (n=13)
| Model | Family | FV | Price/FV | Applicable | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DCF Perpetual Growth | Growth | $0.00 | — | no | Negative/zero FCF — equity value floored at $0 |
| DCF Exit Multiple | Growth | $0.00 | — | no | Negative/zero FCF or EBITDA — equity value floored at $0 |
| Relative Valuation | Relative | $9.37 | 1.58x | yes | P/E 19.36x (blended: static sector reference 14x + trailing (TTM) 32x), scenarios: 14.5x / 19.4x / 23.2x (bear / base = reference held flat / bull), EV/EBITDA 8x |
| Simple DDM | Growth | $42.21 | 0.35x | yes | DPS $1.39, g=5.8% (sustainable: ROE (TTM) × retention; not the terminal-growth assumption), ke=9.3% |
| Two-Stage DDM | Growth | $26.65 | 0.56x | yes | Stage 1: 5% for 5yr, Stage 2: 3.5% perpetual |
| Simple Excess Return | Asset | $5.02 | 2.95x | yes | BV/sh $8.05, ROE (TTM) 5.8%, ke 9.3% |
| Two-Stage Excess Return | Asset | $3.84 | 3.85x | yes | 5yr excess ROE then converge to ke=9.3% |
| Discounted Future Market Cap | Growth | $7.20 | 2.06x | yes | Rev $38.4B, growth -8% (input: historical growth; tapered), Terminal P/S: 1.2x / 1.6x / 2.0x (bear / base = today's held flat / bull, cap 6x) |
| Growth-Adjusted P/E | Relative | — | — | no | — |
| Margin Trajectory | Growth | — | — | no | — |
| Earnings Power Value | Earnings | $25.60 | 0.58x | yes | Normalized EBIT (5y avg op income, one-time charges added back) $15.16B × (1−40%) / WACC 6.6% → EPV (no growth) |
| Residual Income | Asset | $3.69 | 4.01x | yes | BV $8.05 + 5yr PV of (ROE (TTM) 5.8% − Kₑ 9.3%) × BV; BV grows 3.8%/yr |
| Graham Number | Asset | $9.17 | 1.61x | yes | √(22.5 × EPS $0.46 × BVPS $8.05) — Graham's conservative floor |
| EV/EBITDA Relative | Relative | $9.74 | 1.52x | yes | EBITDA $8.81B × sector EV/EBITDA 8.0x |
| FCF Yield | Earnings | — | — | no | — |
| SBC-Adj FCF Yield | Earnings | — | — | no | — |
| Ben Graham Formula | Earnings | $0.39 | 37.95x | yes | EPS $0.46 × (8.5 + 2×-5.0%) × (4.4 / 5.3%) (excluded from median) |
| ROIC-Justified P/B | Asset | $6.84 | 2.16x | yes | BV $8.05 × (ROIC 5.6% / WACC 6.6%) |
| P/Sales Sector | Relative | $13.49 | 1.10x | yes | Revenue $38.40B × sector P/S 1.5x |
| PEG Fair Value | Relative | — | — | no | — |
| Earnings Yield | Earnings | $5.02 | 2.95x | yes | EPS $0.46 / 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 | $7.0b |
| Net debt / NOPAT (after-tax) | -1.27x (net cash) |
| Net debt / operating income (pre-tax) | -0.54x (net cash) |
| Interest coverage | 17.5x |
| Share count CAGR (buyback) | -3.9% |
| Burning cash | no |
Bullet Takeaways
- The counterintuitive fact sits in the averages: the trailing year's operating profit of about $13.04 billion is below the company's own five-year average of roughly $15.16 billion, so the market is discounting a below-par year rather than a peak one.
- One external variable dominates everything else, and it is the seaborne iron ore price set by steel demand half a world away, which is the one input this company does not get to choose.
- The second-quarter financial report lands on July 30, 2026, arriving in the middle of a governance shake-up that has already produced a chairman's resignation and a board move to expel a director.
Bull Case
The usual way to lose money in mining is to buy a cyclical at the top and mistake peak earnings for ordinary ones. The numbers here point at close to the opposite situation. Averaged across five years, with one-time charges added back, operating profit runs at roughly $15.16 billion. The trailing twelve months produced about $13.04 billion. The most recent year is the weaker one. Whatever the market is marking down, it is not a company that has just printed its best result ever.
And what it has marked it down to is unusual on its own terms. The whole business currently changes hands for roughly four dollars per dollar of trailing operating profit. Work that backwards and the arithmetic turns odd: at that level the price sits beneath what a business losing 5% of its operating profit every single year would warrant. This is not a price paying for growth. It is a price declining to pay for continuation.
The operating profile underneath is not that of a marginal producer. A 33% operating margin on about $38.4 billion of revenue is what a low-cost position in a bulk commodity looks like. Every tonne of iron ore sells into the same index price regardless of who dug it up, which means the entire difference between a good mining company and a poor one lands in the cost line and shows up as margin. Holding a third of revenue as operating profit through a soft year is the evidence that the cost position is real rather than asserted.
Shareholders have been getting the proceeds directly. The share count has fallen about 3.9% a year across the four years to the end of 2025. In a business this size that is not a gesture; it is a repeated, mechanical transfer of the asset base into fewer hands, and it shows up in the one place accounting cannot flatter.
Put those together and the bull case turns out to need very little. Value the business on its through-cycle operating profit with no growth assumed at all, no new mine, no price recovery, no extra volume, and the result lands well above today's price. That exercise does not require iron ore to rise. It requires iron ore not to fall a great deal further, and it requires the last five years to be a reasonable guide to the next five. Neither is guaranteed. Both are a good deal less demanding than what most equities are asking their holders to believe.
Bear Case
One price governs this company's results, and the company does not set it. Iron ore is sold into a global index, and the index moves with steel production, which moves with construction, infrastructure and vehicle output in a handful of economies. A domestic producer describes the same exposure in its own risk factors: CLF's FY2025 10-K states that "The volatility of commodity prices, including steel, scrap metal and iron ore, directly and indirectly affects our ability to generate revenue, maintain stable cash flows and fund our operations." That sentence applies with more force to a pure-play iron ore miner than to a steelmaker, because a steelmaker at least has a spread between input and output. A miner has one side of the trade.
The recent direction of travel is unhelpful. One method here simply extends the observed revenue trajectory forward, and that trajectory has been running at roughly minus 8% a year. The price stands about 106% above where that exercise lands. Extrapolating a declining top line is a crude approach, but crude approaches are how a market prices a commodity producer when it does not believe the last cycle repeats.
Governance has become a visible problem rather than a background one. The chairman resigned on July 6, 2026 with immediate effect. The board elected an interim chairman on July 14. Shareholders voted on a permanent chairman at a meeting on July 22, and on the same day the board resolved to impose removal from office on a sitting director over the leak of confidential information from a June board meeting, a conclusion reached by an independent external law firm and now requiring shareholder approval. Three chairmen inside three weeks and a director facing expulsion is not a detail. Capital allocation in a mining company is decided by exactly the body that is currently in dispute with itself.
The asset-based methods tell a different story from the profit-based ones, and the bear should take the asset-based version seriously. On book value of about $8.05 a share, the price sits roughly 195% above where the book-value approaches land. Book value is the accumulated record of what has been spent and what has been written off, and by that measure these shares are not cheap at all. For a cyclical the two readings reconcile in one of two ways. Either the five-year average profit is genuinely repeatable and the asset base understates the business, or the asset base is telling the truth and the average belongs to a period that is over.
There is a floor beneath the operating case, and it is worth sizing honestly. Outside the mines, the company holds equity stakes in other entities worth about 5.0 billion dollars, roughly 8% of the market value. Those holdings persist whatever happens to the iron ore price, so the downside is bounded somewhere above nothing. It is a boundary and not a cushion. Eight percent of market value does not offset an index price that halves, and an index price that halves is a thing that has happened before in this commodity.
Valuation
Take $14.80 as the given and work backwards, and what emerges is not a growth requirement but a bound. The market is paying roughly four dollars for each dollar of trailing operating profit, and at that level the price sits below what a business shedding 5% of its operating profit every year would warrant. There is no demanding growth assumption here to stress-test, because the price does not embed one. That is a rarer starting point than it sounds.
The methods scatter badly, which is what tends to happen when a cyclical is priced this way. The price stands about 195% above where the book-value approaches land and about 52% above the peer-multiple approaches. The approach built on through-cycle operating profit, by contrast, lands well above today's price. Two defensible frames, opposite verdicts, and the entire difference between them is whether the last five years or the last twelve months is the better guide to the next five.
That through-cycle method deserves explaining, because it carries most of the weight. It takes the average operating profit of the past five years with one-time charges added back, about $15.16 billion, applies tax, and capitalises the result assuming no growth whatsoever. No new mine, no volume increase, no price recovery. The value it produces sits comfortably above the current price. That is not a claim about what the shares are worth. It is a statement that today's price does not require the future to be better than the recent past, only that it not be substantially worse.
The inputs underneath are plain. Revenue runs about $38.4 billion, the trailing operating margin is 33%, and book value is about $8.05 a share. The margin is the line worth watching quarter to quarter, because a bulk commodity producer has no pricing lever at all. The index sets the revenue; the mine plan and the freight sets the cost; and the difference between them is the entire business.
The balance sheet is not the source of the discount. Interest costs absorb a small share of operating profit, the business is generating cash rather than consuming it, and the share count keeps falling. The equity stakes held outside the operating business, worth roughly 8% of market value, sit under the downside without changing what the argument is about. The discount is a statement about the iron ore price and about who is running the company, and at present neither of those is settled.
Catalysts
The reporting calendar is fixed and close. On July 2, 2026 the company published its second-quarter timetable: the production and sales report on July 21, 2026 after market close, the financial performance report on July 30, 2026 after market close, and the conference call on July 31. The financial report is the one that matters for the argument above, since it carries the realised price and the cost per tonne that the margin is made of.
Governance has generated more filings this month than operations have. Daniel André Stieler resigned as chairman and board member on July 6, 2026, effective immediately, after serving on the board since 2021. The board elected independent director Wilfred Theodoor Bruijn as chairman on July 14, to serve until shareholders voted. Shareholders met on July 22, and on that same date the board resolved to impose removal from office on director Marcelo Gasparino da Silva, citing the leak of confidential information from the June 19, 2026 board meeting as confirmed by an independent external law firm; the removal requires shareholder approval at a further meeting.
Two other items are worth tracking. On July 14, 2026 the company responded to Brazilian press reports by confirming it had assessed and then ruled out any investment related to the iron ore asset at Corumbá, which is a rare public look at how capital allocation decisions are being filtered right now. On the sell side, Scotiabank cut its target to $16.00 from $19 in the week of July 20, 2026, and Morgan Stanley downgraded the shares in early July citing surplus concerns across metals. Both sit near the current quote and well beneath where the through-cycle earnings approach lands, which is the same disagreement described above showing up in someone else's numbers.
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
Vale 6-K filings, July 2026 · Vale 6-K, July 2, 2026, accession 0001292814-26-003669 · Vale 6-K, July 6, 2026, accession 0001292814-26-003701 · Vale 6-K, July 14, 2026, accession 0001292814-26-003758 · Vale 6-K, July 22, 2026, accession 0001292814-26-003868 · Vale 6-K, July 14, 2026, accession 0001292814-26-003754 · broker actions reported by stockanalysis.com, July 2026