Copper price pulls back from record territory as war jitters trump earnings beats

Copper fell with the rest of the metals complex on Thursday as the deepening US-Iran conflict rattled markets, overshadowing a run of supportive news for the red metal, from blowout quarterly results at Teck Resources and Freeport-McMoRan to fresh progress toward a restart of the shuttered Cobre Panama mine.

Comex copper for September delivery declined as much as 2.5% to $6.33 a pound, and was trading at $6.34, down 2.4%, as of 11:45 a.m. in New York. That leaves the US benchmark about 5% below the record set in early June, and still up more than 12% this year on tight supplies, US tariff expectations and strong Chinese demand.

Earnings season

Teck Resources said second-quarter adjusted EBITDA tripled to C$2.19 billion ($1.6 billion) from C$722 million a year earlier, as revenue climbed 78% to C$3.61 billion. Copper production rose 25% to 135,900 tonnes and realized prices averaged $6.05 per pound, up from $4.32 a year ago. The Quebrada Blanca mine in Chile posted a third straight quarter of stable output at 55,800 tonnes, with full-year guidance unchanged, and Teck’s shares jumped as much as 5.2% in Toronto.

“We see a clear path to the combined Anglo-Teck being a go-to copper major over the next 12 months,” Jefferies analysts led by Christopher LaFemina wrote in a note. The merger with Anglo American has now been cleared in Canada, Chile and Japan, leaving China as the key outstanding approval, with closing still expected within 12 to 18 months of the September announcement.

Freeport-McMoRan, meanwhile, beat estimates with second-quarter adjusted net income of $1.1 billion, or $0.74 per share, on revenue of $7 billion. Copper sales of 710 million pounds (about 322,000 tonnes) came in ahead of the company’s April guidance on shipment timing, at an average realized price of $6.17 per pound, and the company reported steady progress ramping up the Grasberg Block Cave mine after last year’s deadly mudslide, which has pushed a full restart out to early 2028.

Freeport expects 2026 copper sales of 3.1 billion pounds (about 1.4 million tonnes) at unit net cash costs of $1.90 per pound. Its shares slipped 2.2% with the copper price, while Anglo American added almost 4% in New York after its own first-half results, in which it lowered its copper unit cost guidance.

The earnings sweep extended to Southern Copper, which posted record adjusted EBITDA of $2.86 billion and net income of $1.67 billion for the quarter, and mapped a route past one million tonnes of annual output by 2029 as its Tia Maria project in Peru nears the halfway mark of construction. Management raised 2026 production guidance to 917,000 tonnes and sees a slight global deficit this year, estimating exchange inventories cover only about 15 days of worldwide demand, though the stock slid 3.8% on Thursday with the metal.

Chile clean-up, Panama talks

Chile is recovering from the winter storm that killed 13 people and prompted a state of catastrophe in the Coquimbo and Atacama regions. No rain is forecast for the hardest-hit areas over the next five days, the main copper districts further north escaped largely unscathed, and central-region ports are gradually returning to normal, though some terminal restrictions remain.

Antofagasta deployed heavy equipment to clear roads near Los Pelambres, Lundin Mining’s Caserones has been suspended since July 18 with full-year guidance intact, and Teck said its Carmen de Andacollo operation has been partially suspended since July 17.

In Panama, Reuters reported the government is weighing the creation of a state-owned mining company to partner with First Quantum Minerals on a restart of Cobre Panama, shut since late 2023. Structures under discussion would hand First Quantum a 60% to 65% stake with the state holding the remainder, or lease the operation to the Canadian miner in exchange for royalties and taxes, with a decision on the mine’s long-term future expected before year-end. First Quantum, which has paused its $20 billion arbitration claim and begun processing stockpiled ore at the site, closed down 0.7% in Toronto on Wednesday.

Vanishing stockpiles

The pullback comes against a backdrop of rapidly draining exchange stocks outside the US. Copper inventories in LME-registered warehouses fell another 6,750 tonnes in Thursday’s daily report to 284,175 tonnes, the lowest since March and down roughly a fifth from late June, and more metal is booked to leave, with more than half the remaining stock on cancelled warrants awaiting delivery out earlier this week.

Deliverable stocks in warehouses monitored by the Shanghai Futures Exchange have collapsed 82% since early May, while the Yangshan premium importers pay to bring copper into China, at $103 a tonne, remains around its highest in more than a year. Much of that metal has instead landed in the US, where Comex warehouses hold a record 630,000-plus tonnes after eight straight quarters of builds, a stockpile assembled largely on expectations of a duty on refined copper imports, a decision that still sits with the White House.

(With files from Bloomberg and Reuters)