TacticScaleWhat Freeport-McMoRan Does & How It Makes Money (FCX)
Updated October 2026 · reflects Freeport-McMoRan's latest reported financials
U.S.-based miner of copper, gold and molybdenum across three continents. It mines and processes ore from its own properties and sells the copper, gold, molybdenum and silver it produces.
How Freeport-McMoRan makes money
It mines and processes ore from its own properties and sells the copper, gold, molybdenum and silver it produces. Its earnings depend mainly on how much metal it produces and on market metal prices.
What Freeport-McMoRan does
Freeport-McMoRan is a mining company headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona. It mainly produces copper and also mines gold, molybdenum and silver. It has mines in North America, South America and Indonesia. The best-known asset is the Grasberg minerals district in Indonesia. In the U.S., it runs Morenci, Bagdad, Safford, Sierrita and Miami in Arizona, Chino and Tyrone in New Mexico, and the Henderson and Climax molybdenum operations in Colorado. In South America, it operates Cerro Verde in Peru and El Abra in Chile. The company was incorporated in 1987 and was called Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. until July 2014. It earns its revenue by selling the metals it mines, so its results depend heavily on copper prices, output volumes and conditions at a few large mines.
Products & services
- Copper
- Gold
- Molybdenum
- Silver
- Grasberg minerals district (Indonesia)
- Morenci mine (Arizona)
What is Freeport-McMoRan worth?
On an owner-earnings DCF, Freeport-McMoRan's most-likely value is about $27 versus a recent price near $74 (63% above fair value). But TacticScale only calls a stock undervalued when the price sits below its conservative no-growth floor (~$16) with a margin of safety — so the honest verdict here is “Fairly priced — no edge.” Fair value earns its keep only at the extremes, not in the wide middle.
Price sits in the normal range — fair value isn't actionable here; it earns its keep only when price drops below the no-growth floor, or runs to roughly double the optimistic case.
Analysis, not advice. Fair value is a margin-of-safety estimate from a deterministic owner-earnings DCF, not a price target or recommendation. See the full breakdown →