Freeport-McMoRan (FCX)
Materials · NYSE · US
Fundamentals
Valuation and ratings
Freeport-McMoRan trades at $60.97, which is 19% below the $72.77 our discounted cash flow model puts on the business. On that measure alone it screens as undervalued, though a DCF is an argument rather than a measurement, and the market is frequently right about why something is cheap.
Our moat model scores it 60 out of 100, which is a moat, but not a deep one. A moat is a structural reason competitors cannot take the profits away, and it matters more to a long holding period than any single quarter's numbers do.
It changes hands at 32.6 times earnings. Be careful reading that in isolation: for a cyclical business a low P/E arrives at the top of the cycle, when profits are peaking and about to fall, which is exactly when the shares look cheapest and are not.
About Freeport-McMoRan
Freeport-McMoRan Inc. engages in the mining of mineral properties in North America, South America, and Indonesia. The company primarily explores for copper, gold, molybdenum, silver, and other metals. Its assets include the Grasberg minerals district in Indonesia; Morenci, Bagdad, Safford, Sierrita, and Miami in Arizona; Chino and Tyrone in New Mexico; and Henderson and Climax in Colorado, North America, as well as Cerro Verde in Peru and El Abra in Chile. The company was formerly known as Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. and changed its name to Freeport-McMoRan Inc. in July 2014. The company was incorporated in 1987 and is headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona.
FCX passes 2 of our 30 screens today
Each screen prints the exact criteria it used, and the circumstances in which it is wrong.
Smart money ownership
17 of the funds we track reported a position in their latest SEC 13F filing. Largest first:
- Ken Fisher, Fisher Asset Management, LLC$3.83B · 1.3% of book
- Capital Research Global, Capital Research Global Investors$2.40B · 0.4% of book
- Israel Englander, MILLENNIUM MANAGEMENT LLC$744.61M · 0.3% of book
- Arrowstreet Capital, ARROWSTREET CAPITAL, LIMITED PARTNERSHIP$660.80M · 0.4% of book
- D. E. Shaw, D. E. Shaw & Co., Inc.$537.82M · 0.3% of book
A word of warning on reading these figures: a 13F reports the market value of a holding, so a fund that traded nothing at all still appears to have sold when the price fell. We found 102 companies where the standard reading gives the opposite answer. Only the share count is honest.
Common questions
Is Freeport-McMoRan (FCX) undervalued?
Against our discounted cash flow estimate of $72.77, FCX at $60.97 is 19% below fair value. That is one model's answer, not a recommendation, and most of a DCF's output sits in a terminal value nobody can forecast.
Which funds own FCX?
17 of the institutions we track reported a position in FCX in their most recent SEC 13F filing. A 13F is filed up to 45 days after quarter end, so it tells you what a fund held then, not what it holds now.
What is FCX's P/E ratio?
FCX trades at 32.6 times earnings. A low P/E is not automatically cheap: on a cyclical company it is usually a warning that earnings are at a peak.
The full research page for FCX, with financial statements, ownership detail, peer comparison and alerts, is free inside the app.
Data from company filings, exchange quotes and SEC EDGAR 13F disclosures. Quotes are delayed. Metrics we do not have are left out rather than estimated. Educational information, not financial advice.