Gold miner on sale: Why Newmont is cheaper than it should be
Record cash flow, net cash on the books, billions in buybacks, and a freshly won permit that opens a giant copper-gold deposit. And yet the stock trades below the value of its own mines – less than it would cost today simply to buy its working mining projects. The question for an investor is not whether the company makes money, because it makes record money. It is how much of that comes from the company itself and how much merely from high gold prices, and whether the new permit will actually trigger the re-rating the bulls are waiting for.
Key points
In the second quarter of 2026, Newmont earned a record free cash flow of $2.2 billion, but the main credit goes to the price of gold, which jumped 33 percent year over year to $4,414 per ounce.
The company trades at roughly 0.82 times its net asset value (NAV), meaning cheaper than it would cost to buy its own mines.
The newly won permit for the Red Chris project opens a large copper-gold deposit that, according to the bull case, is not priced into the stock at all. The Canadian government is adding a C$500 million contribution to it.
Newmont returned $1.9 billion to shareholders during the quarter and has already bought back more than 100 million of its own shares, while distributing over 80 percent of cash flow.
The whole story, however, stands and falls with the price of gold. In a bear scenario with gold around $2,500, target prices as low as around $41 appear against today's roughly $95.
Gold is enjoying one of its strongest decades in history, and the companies that mine it are swimming in cash. Yet the largest of them, America's Newmont, trades at a price that would make more sense for a troubled business. The market pays less for it than it would cost simply to buy its ready, working mines. In other words, if someone bought all of Newmont today and sold off its assets, they would make money. That is a situation that looks odd, to say the least, for an industry leader at a time of record profits.
It is from this discrepancy that the investment thesis examined in this analysis arises. Newmont recently won a key permit for the large Red Chris project in Canada, a copper-gold deposit whose value, according to the stock's advocates, the market does not price in at all. Add to that net cash on the books and massive buybacks of its own shares, and you get the argument that today an investor is buying a quality mining business at a discount and one whole large project on top practically for free.
It sounds tempting, but we need to be honest about two things. First, those record numbers were not conjured by the company itself so much as by the price of gold, which soared by a third over the year. Second, this whole structure stands on a single, and at the same time least predictable, pillar: where the price of gold goes next. And gold can fall as fast as it rises, as it demonstrated right at the start of 2026 with its lightning drop.