Commodities

Freeport-McMoRan: Construindo o Suprimento de Cobre para o Futuro

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O Cobre é Mais Essencial do Que Nunca

Early on in human history, some people figured out that some special rocks contained metal and that this metal could be melted away and purified. Thanks to their lower melting points and the relatively easy detection of rich veins of ore, gold and copper were among the first metals to be refined.

Por milênios, o cobre e, posteriormente, o bronze (cobre + estanho) foram os metais mais importantes da Terra. Eles formaram a base de todas as ferramentas e armas e criaram as primeiras redes de comércio internacional, com estanho das Ilhas Britânicas ou da Ásia Central chegando até o que hoje é o Egito e o Iraque.

Fonte: Phys.org

Após a invenção da fundição de ferro, o cobre tornou‑se um metal muito menos estratégico, sendo progressivamente relegado a moedas de baixo valor, joias, acessórios, telhados, etc.

Isso continuou até a Revolução Industrial e a descoberta da eletricidade, já que o cobre é um excelente condutor elétrico.

Hoje, o cobre é mais necessário do que nunca, em grande parte devido à tendência de eletrificação de tudo: produção de energia, transporte, indústrias pesadas, aquecimento e refrigeração, etc.

A produção anual de cobre foi de 23 milhões de toneladas métricas em 2024. É provável que muitas das maiores e mais fáceis de explorar jazidas de cobre já tenham sido encontradas. Essa ideia é apoiada pelo baixo número de novas descobertas nos últimos anos, apesar do orçamento de exploração muito alto dos mineradores de cobre desde 2005.

Na prática, nenhuma descoberta significativa de grandes depósitos de cobre foi feita desde 2015.

O cobre já estava caminhando para escassez, e isso foi antes da explosão dos data centers e da aceleração da transição para veículos elétricos, que aumentaram ainda mais as projeções de demanda. Como resultado, os preços têm seguido uma trajetória ascendente constante desde 2025.

Fonte: LME

(Você pode ler mais sobre cobre e como investir nele em nosso relatório de investimento dedicado a este metal)

O aumento dos preços dos metais beneficia diretamente os mineradores que os produzem, por meio de 2 mecanismos: um aumento direto no fluxo de caixa livre e o aumento do valor do metal ainda no subsolo.

Quando se trata de operações puras de cobre, especialmente com exposição a minas localizadas principalmente em países ocidentais ou nas Américas, poucas empresas podem rivalizar com a Freeport-McMoRan, a terceira maior produtora mundial de cobre.

FCX Gráfico de preços

Visão Geral da Freeport-McMoRan

História da Freeport-McMoRan

The current Freeport-McMoRan traces its origins to Freeport Sulphur Company, founded in Texas in 1912.

Later on, until the 1950s, the company diversified by buying mines producing manganese, nickel, aluminum, and potash.

In 1967, the company started to mine the Grasberg copper and gold deposit in Papua, Indonesia. To this day, this mine is the largest above-ground copper deposit ever discovered. The Grasberg mine needed extensive civil engineering to start production, including a 101-kilometre (63 mi) long access road with kilometer-long tunnels, a 109-kilometre (68 mi) slurry pipeline, and the world’s longest single-span aerial tramway.

In 1981, Freeport Minerals Company merged with the McMoRan Oil and Gas Company, creating a major independent oil and gas producer with interests in agricultural minerals (sulphur and phosphoric acid) and in gold, copper, silver and uranium.

In 1988, Freeport-McMoRan was partially spun off from its parent company (FTX), to finally be fully separated by 1994.

In the late 1990s and 2000s, the company went through a series of complex acquisitions and mergers, first with investment from Rio Tinto in 1995, then a merger with Global Inc. In 1997, it acquired Phelps Dodge in 2007 to reinforce its position in copper.

In the 2010s, Freeport sold non-essential assets to help finance the further development of its copper assets and reduce its debt, notably its  Eagle Ford shale oil asset to Encana for $3.1B in 2014, and its deepwater assets to  Anadarko Petroleum in 2016.

In agosto de 2017, the company agreed to give a 51% interest in the Grasberg mine to the Government of Indonesia and build a smelter in exchange for a special permit to operate the mine until 2041 (more on Grasberg below).

Overall, this complex corporate history led to the accumulation of one of the world’s best collections of copper and molybdenum mineral assets, which would be very difficult to replicate by a competitor.

Freeport-McMoRan em Números

Today, Freeport-McMoRan is the world’s largest producer of molybdenum, and #3 in global copper production, behind the mining super-giant BHP and the Chile state-owned Codelco, making it the largest copper-focused publicly traded stock (as BHP is more focused on iron, coal, and potash).

Besides copper and gold, the company is also the world’s top producer of molybdenum (a structural steel strengthening agent), which is also a by-product of copper extraction, especially at the US mines of Enderson and Climax (Colorado).

In total, the company operates 10 major copper mines, of which 7 are located in the USA. The company is structured around 157 subsidiary corporations spanning 16 countries for the control of regional mines, logistical hubs, and trade networks.

Fonte: Freeport-McMoRan

This makes Freeport-McMoRan not only the #1 US copper producer, but also responsible for approximately 60% of domestic production in 2025 and 70% of all its refined copper. The company is planning to grow that production significantly by +60% by 2030. This will lead to an estimated support for more than 100,000 U.S. jobs, along with a broad network of suppliers and local businesses.

 

Meanwhile, Freeport-McMoRan directly employs 29,000 employees, a 13% workforce expansion since 2022 to scale up heavy underground block-cave operations.

The company holds 158 patents primarily focused on metallurgical extraction, smelting safety, and vehicle logistics, including autonomous fleet logistics and hydrometallurgy leaching.

In 2025, Freeport-McMoRan sold 3.6 billion pounds of copper, as well as 1.1 million ounce of gold (as both metals tend to be found together in mineral resources), and expect to grow that production to 4.1 billion pound by 2028, even if 2026 should be a bit smaller due to upgrade of the Grasberg mine disrupting operations temporarily and collapse in September 8th, 2025 (“mud rush”).

Ativos da Freeport-McMoRan

Grassberg

Historically and still today, the flagship mining asset of Freeport-McMoRan, Grasberg, is first and foremost a geologically exceptional copper deposit, with mineral resources (proven and probable reserves) estimated at 30.8 billion pounds of copper, 26.3 million ounces of gold, and 121.3 million ounces of silver. It is located in Indonesia, in the  Mimika Regency, Central Papua region.

Fonte: Mining Doc

The first hints of the mineral resources in this remote region were detected by Dutch geologists in the 1930s, but serious efforts to exploit them only started in the 1960s, at the same time as the administration of Dutch New Guinea was transferred to newly independent Indonesia.

Today’s mine includes a large open pit mine 2.4 kilometers (1.5 mi) wide at the surface, completed in 2019, three operating underground mines (Grasberg Block Cave, Deep Mill Level Zone and Big Gossan), all feeding raw ore into four concentrators.

In 2018, the sale of a majority ownership of Grasberg to the state-owned mining company, PT Inalum, was effectively forced by the Indonesian government through regulatory pressure and resource nationalism, notably the ban on the export of unprocessed copper concentrates in 2017 and the refusal to grant a long-term operating extension of the mining license.

To resolve the stalemate and secure its operator status, Freeport accepted a significantly lower price per share than its partner Rio Tinto (which completely left the operation), valuing the asset below its initial projections, causing a temporary crash in the company stock price.

Today, Freeport-McMoRan holds a Special Mining Permit (IUPK) allowing it to remain the mine’s physical operator until 2041, with an agreement to transfer an additional 12% stake to the Indonesian government at zero cost to secure licensing past 2041.

The pressure from the Indonesian government was both a general intent of keeping more of the country’s natural resources’ profits in the country and a response to local opposition to the mine.

Currently, operations at Grasberg are powered by a coal-fired power station, which will be replaced in 2027 by a 265-megawatt liquefied natural gas-fired combined cycle gas turbine power plant.

Besides the upgrade to the energy supply, Grasberg operations are also recovering throughout 2026 from the 2025 Grasberg mud rush. A colossal 800,000 metric tons of wet material violently and unexpectedly breached the underground workings.

This massive rush was triggered when accumulated water and fine silt burst through a previously undetected hole at the base of the mine’s retired open pit. The catastrophe led to 7 casualties and slashed the mine output for 2026 by 50%.

As such, 2027 and later years are expected to be a steep increase from current production numbers, with 2028’s copper production double that of 2026’s (Grasberg recovery + other mines extension).

Minas dos EUA

While Grasberg is the largest and most emblematic asset of the company, Freeport-McMoRan also has a major presence on US soil.

The US operations of the company represent 1/3rd of the company’s production (excluding Grasberg disruptions), and about 60-70% of the USA’s copper production.

In the context of the US looking to secure the supply of critical minerals essential for the energy transition, military production, and the AI supply chain, this positions Freeport-McMoRan to become a key strategic supplier to the country.

Besides existing mine expansion, Freeport is also moving into exploiting the historical stockpiles of unexploited ore from the previous decade of mining. A new leaching method can help the company extract ore from these discarded piles of copper-containing rocks, with a potential for quickly growing run rate until 2030.

“By getting more out of what’s already mined, these efforts help strengthen domestic supply while improving efficiency and reducing waste. The approach supports more consistent output from existing operations as demand for copper continues to grow across the country.”

This could essentially generate a “free” new mine with 42 billion pounds of resources from the US mines, producing up to 800 million pounds per year, or an additional copper production equivalent to 1/4th of 2025’s.

Outras Minas & Ativos

Freeport-McMoRan operates two mines in South America: a copper-molybdenum mine in Peru (Cerro Verde), and a copper mine in Chile (El Abra).

Cerro Verde is producing annually 600 million pounds of copper and 15 million pounds of molybdenum, and El Abra is producing annually 500 million pounds of copper cathode.

In Indonesia, besides Grasberg, Freeport-McMoRan also has smelting and refining operations centered around the Java Integrated Industrial and Port Estate (JIIPE).

This includes the long-established joint venture facility where PT Freeport Indonesia owns a 66% stake and Japan’s Mitsubishi Materials owns 34%, with an annual output capacity of approximately 342,000 metric tons of copper cathode, and the Manyar mega-smelter, a $3.7B facility with an output of roughly 600,000 to 650,000 tons of copper cathode, as well as gold and silver.

Futuro da Freeport-McMoRan

Economia Verde e IA

Under regulations like the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), automakers must source high percentages of their battery and critical powertrain minerals from the U.S. or its Free Trade Agreement (FTA) partners to qualify for consumer tax credits.

This put local copper suppliers like Freeport’s US operations in Arizona and New Mexico in a good position to become a preferred, regulatory-compliant supplier. In particular, the Bagdad mine expansion, heavily optimized with automation, could capture an estimated 25% of the U.S. EV copper market.

Similar domestic markets in grid, non-EV batteries, and AI data centers will also benefit the company.

Internationally, Indonesia’s copper will also fuel Southeast Asia’s growing EV ecosystem, especially with the new giant, state-of-the-art domestic smelters recently started in the country.

AI is also not just a new market but an operational advantage for Freeport-McMoRan, as it is already deploying Autonomous Haulage Systems (AHS) in partnership with Caterpillar.

Trajetória Financeira da Freeport-McMoRan

While the current trajectory of copper prices and profitability of copper mines, especially US mines, seems rosy, investors in the mining sector need to always remember the sector is highly cyclical, with brutal downturns.

So in that respect, the policy of Freeport-McMoRan to keep debt below a $3-4 bn threshold is a net positive, especially compared to the debt-fueled acquisitions of the 2000s that were followed by a crash in commodity prices after 2008.

The company’s debt is also paced out so that most repayments are scheduled for after 2031, having let the company lock in low interest rates before the recent global rise in cost of capital and inflation.

Shareholders should expect a stable distribution policy, with around 50% of free cash flow dedicated to organic growth, and 50% to be returned to shareholders, in the form of 1/3rd as a base dividend (stable at $0.075/share since 2022), 1/3rd as variable dividends (also at $0.075/share since 2022), and 1/3rd from share repurchases.

Rentabilidade e Preços do Cobre

As with most miners, the future price of its main commodity will have a massive impact on the success or failure of an investment in the company. This is one of the most difficult metrics to estimate.

What investors can factor into their risk models is the sensitivity of the company’s profitability to variation in copper prices and other inputs:

  • Every increase or decrease in copper price of $0.1/pound results in an extra or lower $300M in free cash flow.
  • An increase in diesel price of 10% results in a loss of %85M in free cash flow.
  • A strengthening by 10% of the US dollar compared to the Chilean peso, Indonesian rupiah, and Australian dollar results in an extra $1802M in free cash flow.

This still can make any forecast of Freeport’s upcoming EBITDA and free cash flow in the late 2020s difficult, especially with diesel prices potentially impacted by war with Iran or lower Russian exports, while such an energy crisis could also boost demand for copper for batteries and EVs, boosting copper prices in turn.

Projections of data center build-up and the associated energy consumption (and grid upgrades) are also likely to impact copper prices.

However, in the long run, Freeport has the advantage of being a massive copper producer with strong reserves and growing production, in a world that needs, in the next 1-2 decades, more copper than mankind has mined in its entire history.

So while some turbulence might happen in the short term (e.g., high diesel prices, AI buildup), the structural trends of electrification of heating (heat pumps), EVs, stationary battery energy storage, grid upgrades, etc., should keep copper demand hot and copper price elevated.

Últimas Notícias e Desenvolvimentos das Ações da Freeport-McMoRan (FCX)

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Jonathan é um ex‑pesquisador bioquímico que trabalhou em análise genética e ensaios clínicos. Ele agora é analista de ações e escritor financeiro com foco em inovação, ciclos de mercado e geopolítica em sua publicação 'The Eurasian Century'.