Freeport-McMoRan arrives at its July 23 Q2 earnings print having shed 17% over the past month, yet with the analyst community more constructive than it has been in some time.
The most striking feature of the pre-earnings setup is the breadth of bullish analyst revisions. Barclays lifted its target to $80 just days ago, maintaining Overweight. JPMorgan raised to $77 from $73 earlier in the month, while BofA pushed to $80 from $74 — both keeping positive ratings. Goldman was the lone dissenter, trimming its target by a single dollar to $74 while holding Buy. The consensus mean now sits at roughly $70.93, implying around 21% upside from the current price of $58.38. That gap is wide enough to signal the Street sees the recent pullback as an entry point rather than a warning sign.
Bulls are anchored on two themes. The Grasberg licence extension provides a long-term asset-level uplift that doesn't show up cleanly in near-term earnings. Combined with the company's copper-gold leverage and a strong balance sheet, the argument is that FCX deserves a re-rating higher once production visibility improves. Bears, meanwhile, point to downward revisions in EBITDA and NAVPS, 2026 production guidance that came in below expectations, and valuation multiples that remain discounted relative to peers — a discount they argue reflects genuine execution uncertainty rather than a buying opportunity. The P/E has compressed around 4 points over the past month to roughly 16.9x, and EV/EBITDA has drifted down to about 7.1x, both moving in the bears' direction.
The copper peer group offers useful context on the week's move. SCCO fell about 1.9% on the week, a softer decline than FCX's 5.1% drop. TSX-listed names told a similar story — HBM and FM were both down more than 6%, suggesting sector-wide pressure rather than FCX-specific weakness. The stock's short interest, at just over 2% of the float, is not a meaningful signal here. Borrow availability is essentially unconstrained, and the cost to borrow at 0.31% is negligible. Short sellers are not driving the price action.
Options positioning is almost perfectly neutral. The put/call ratio of 0.96 sits barely above its 20-day average of 0.95 — a z-score of 0.39, well within normal range. Neither side is paying up for directional protection ahead of the print. The two most recent quarterly results offer a wide range of outcomes: a 3.3% one-day gain after June's print versus a 13.2% one-day drop after April's, suggesting the market treats each FCX release as a fresh event rather than a pattern. Thursday's print will test whether the company can narrow the gap between bullish Street targets and the underlying production guidance that has so far disappointed.
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