Timing note: The current date is Thursday, July 23, 2026, and FCX’s official calendar schedules the second-quarter conference call for today at 10:00 a.m. ET—not tomorrow. This preview is written on a pre-release basis. (fcx.com)
FCX should report a quarter supported by exceptionally strong copper pricing, but the stock’s reaction will probably depend less on whether adjusted EPS is a few cents above or below consensus and more on one question:
Is the Grasberg Block Cave recovery proceeding according to the revised April plan, or is another production reset coming?
The April report reduced 2026 copper and gold guidance after FCX encountered wetter-than-expected ore and material-handling constraints during the Grasberg restart. That disclosure drove a roughly 13% one-day decline in FCX shares. The stock has subsequently recovered part of that loss, leaving investors positioned for evidence that the revised plan is now credible.
A clean Grasberg update, reaffirmed 2026 guidance and stable cost assumptions would likely outweigh modest headline estimate variance. Conversely, another delay would call into question the steep production recovery embedded in the second-half outlook.
Analyst estimates vary by data provider, but the current range is approximately:
| Metric | Street expectation / company guide |
|---|---|
| Adjusted EPS | $0.59–$0.62 |
| Revenue | $6.4B–$6.8B |
| Company copper-sales estimate | 690 million lb |
| Company gold-sales estimate | 140,000 oz |
| Company molybdenum-sales estimate | 22 million lb |
| Company unit net cash-cost estimate | $2.24/lb of copper |
Consensus sources cluster around $0.60 of EPS, although revenue estimates show a relatively wide spread—likely reflecting uncertainty around shipment timing, provisional pricing and Indonesian inventory. (tipranks.com)
FCX’s second-quarter volume guidance implies approximately 5% sequential growth in copper sales and 16% growth in gold sales, but also a roughly 17% increase in unit net cash costs from the first quarter. The higher cost guidance primarily reflects the production mix, reduced Grasberg contribution and elevated energy and consumable costs. FCX entered the quarter expecting 690 million pounds of copper sales, 140,000 ounces of gold sales and unit net cash costs of $2.24 per pound. (sec.gov)
Year-over-year comparisons will look unusual:
Copper pricing should be a major offset. LME spot copper averaged approximately $6.05/lb in 2Q26, up about 4% from the first-quarter average and roughly 40% year over year. (tradingview.com)
FCX restarted Grasberg Block Cave Production Blocks 2 and 3 in late March, but inspections found a larger proportion of wet drawpoints following the mine’s period of inactivity. The extraction equipment can handle wet ore; the bottleneck is the chute system that loads ore onto automated trains.
FCX is installing specialized flow-control equipment and, in April, forecast that:
Management characterized this as a timing and material-handling issue rather than a problem with the resource or ultimate metal recovery. (sec.gov)
The most important disclosures will be:
A quarter in line with the 690-million-pound sales guide is helpful, but it is not sufficient on its own. Shipment timing can obscure mine performance. Investors need operating evidence that Grasberg can deliver the second-half ramp.
The market will probably accept normal variability around quarterly sales. It will be far less forgiving of any reduction to FCX’s revised full-year outlook of:
Those figures already incorporate a substantial reduction from January guidance, when FCX expected 3.4 billion pounds of copper and 800,000 ounces of gold.
This should be a strong pricing quarter but not necessarily a clean margin quarter.
Investors should therefore examine absolute operating costs and idle-facility charges, not just the reported $/lb cash-cost metric. In the first quarter, FCX excluded $406 million of Grasberg idle-facility and restoration costs from consolidated unit net cash costs.
FCX’s April assumptions included:
| 2026 guidance | April outlook |
|---|---|
| Copper sales | 3.1B lb |
| Gold sales | 650,000 oz |
| Molybdenum sales | 90M lb |
| Unit net cash costs | $1.95/lb |
| Operating cash flow | $8.7B |
| Capital expenditures | $4.3B |
| Major-project capital | $3.0B |
The cash-flow estimate assumed copper at $6.00/lb, gold at $4,500/oz and molybdenum at $25/lb for the final three quarters of 2026. FCX estimated that each $0.10/lb change in copper prices would affect full-year operating cash flow by approximately $220 million. (s22.q4cdn.com)
Management also said second-half copper volumes should be approximately 30% above first-half volumes, while second-half gold volumes should be approximately 50% higher. That makes the second-half trajectory crucial: reaffirming the annual total effectively requires management to maintain confidence in a meaningful sequential acceleration at Grasberg.
The Americas operations have become more important while Grasberg is constrained.
In the first quarter:
Investors should watch for sustained mining-rate improvements at Morenci and stable performance at Cerro Verde. The April report noted higher mining rates at Morenci but also mill-efficiency challenges at Cerro Verde.
FCX is targeting approximately 300 million pounds of incremental copper production from leaching initiatives in 2026, after producing 54 million incremental pounds in Q1. Management believes additives, heat and improved stockpile irrigation could ultimately establish a path toward 800 million incremental pounds annually.
Useful Q2 disclosures would include:
This matters because high-margin leach pounds are one of the few near-term ways FCX can expand production without committing billions of dollars to a conventional concentrator.
FCX entered the quarter with a solid balance sheet:
The company subsequently replaced its revolver with a new five-year, $3 billion facility maturing May 14, 2031, reinforcing its liquidity position.
The larger capital-allocation question is whether FCX moves toward approving the Bagdad expansion in the second half of 2026. The project could add approximately 200 million–250 million pounds of annual copper production for estimated capital of about $3.5 billion. Management has indicated economics are supported at a copper price near $4/lb.
Also worth monitoring:
Likely interpretation: The April guidance reset was conservative, and the principal operational risk is stabilizing.
Likely interpretation: Constructive, but the stock remains highly sensitive to each subsequent Grasberg update.
Likely interpretation: The market will question both the 2027 recovery and management’s ability to forecast the Grasberg restart.
FCX has a favorable commodity-price backdrop, but this is fundamentally an operational-confidence quarter. Strong copper prices should support earnings even with sharply lower year-over-year Grasberg volumes. The decisive factor will be whether management can demonstrate that the revised mine plan is working and reaffirm the production acceleration expected in the second half.
The cleanest positive setup is guidance maintained, Grasberg milestones on schedule and cash costs contained. A small EPS miss under those conditions could be overlooked. A headline beat paired with another Grasberg delay probably would not be.