This chart shows the 5 year performance of copper producers Southern (SCCO), Freeport (FCX), Antofagasta (ANTO.L), FNX Mining (FNX.to) and Quadra (QUA.to).
FNX and QUA were chosen to give an idea of a the smaller end of the producer sphere. SCCO, FCX and ANTO.L are there to represent the bigger mining boys. It’s worth mentioning here that “pure copper” plays are hard to come by, as companies such as Xstrata, BHP, Anglo etc are also very large copper producers but Cu is just one part of their overall operations. Even FCX’s full corp title is “Freeport McMoRan Copper and Gold” which tells you something pretty straight about that company, too. In fact, the closest examples of “pure copper” out there are ANTO and SCCO (even though they have byproduct credits themselves).
On the the five year copper price chart:
If you’d asked just a couple of weeks ago the percentage changes would have been pretty different, but as regards this snapshot the move is from $1.47/lb to $3.16/lb, a difference of 115%. Therefore the “pure copper” plays SCCO and ANTO.L have done significantly better over time and we haven’t even included the very tasty dividends that SCCO throws off every quarter.
A semi-OT to round off, while we’re on the subject of Cu. Here’s the latest LME inventory chart…
…and we see the drop continues. Here’s a quote from this report on the issue today:
“Copper stockpiles tracked by the LME fell 0.3 percent to 485,150 tons, the 13th drop in a row. Bookings to remove metal from inventories jumped 15 percent to 19,525 tons.