Freeport-McMoRan has clawed back to $64.25 after this week's sector-wide bruising, but the stock is still down 10.4% on the week — and the gap between its modest recovery and the Street's prevailing optimism is the central tension heading into the next phase.
The earnings event the market had been bracing for has now passed. The June 10 print followed a Q1 report on April 23 that sent the stock down 13.2% in a single session and 17.9% over the subsequent five days — the sharpest post-earnings reaction in the recent history captured in the data. That context matters as investors digest this week's numbers. The week's decline follows the pattern from the June 5 copper-complex selloff documented in the prior note. Notably, FCX has outperformed its closest peers again: SCCO fell 13%, HBM dropped 19.2%, NGEX lost 25%, and LUN shed 15.7% on the week, making FCX's 10.4% decline look relatively resilient within the group.
Positioning remains conspicuously unburdened for a stock this volatile. Short interest has actually eased this week — down 5.2% to just 1.95% of the free float — continuing a gentle decline that has been in place for most of the past month. Borrow costs have fallen sharply, dropping 32% on the week to 0.28% annualized, the lowest level in over a month. Availability is extraordinarily loose at roughly 8,900% of short interest, meaning the lending pool is essentially unlimited relative to current short demand. None of the data points to a community of committed bears driving the selloff; the price action has been a macro and commodity-price story, not a short-seller conviction play. The put/call ratio at 0.985 is only marginally above its 20-day average of 0.955 — hardly the defensive spike you'd expect if options traders were bracing for further damage.
The Street is more constructive than current price levels imply. The consensus sits at buy, with a mean price target of $68.72 against a close of $64.25 — roughly 7% upside. This week brought a fresh signal: Bernstein raised its target to $58.50 (maintaining Market Perform), a modest move but notable because it arrives after the earnings event and represents a floor-raise from a firm that remains cautious on the name. The more bullish posture comes from Barclays, which initiated at Overweight with a $77 target in late May, and UBS, which nudged its Buy target to $75. Against that, Morgan Stanley downgraded to Equal-Weight in late April, cutting its target to $66 after the Q1 print. The analyst recommendation differential factor ranks in the 95th percentile — meaning the spread between bullish and bearish analyst positioning is unusually wide relative to the broader universe, a signal that conviction is polarised rather than neutral. The EV/EBITDA multiple has compressed 30 points over the past month to 8.1x, and the P/E has pulled back nearly 1.3 turns to 20.1x — valuation has gotten modestly cheaper as the stock retreated, which feeds the bull case around leverage to copper prices if the macro backdrop improves. The bear case centres on EBITDA and NAVPS estimate cuts and production guidance that came in below expectations, creating near-term earnings headwinds even as the Grasberg licence extension provides long-term optionality.
Institutional ownership tells a relatively stable story. BlackRock added over 17 million shares as of late May, lifting its stake to 8.75% of the company. Fisher Asset Management and State Street also added modestly in their most recent reporting periods. The only notable trimmer among the top holders is Morgan Stanley, which cut its position by nearly 8.9 million shares — directionally consistent with its downgrade.
The next quarterly print is scheduled for July 23. Between now and then, the key watch item is whether copper prices stabilise or extend their decline — given that FCX's short interest and borrow market show essentially no bearish structural conviction, further moves in either direction are likely to remain driven by the commodity itself rather than any repositioning in the stock's lending market.
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