Author: Mark Holder
Covestor Model: Opportunistic Arbitrage
Disclosure: Long FCX
In the financial world these days, information is loosely passed around as fact whether correct or not. That makes the following table interesting, because a lot of people talk about copper and investing in the sector, but this has to be the first table I’ve seen in a while with the updated production leaders in the category based on 2010 production numbers.
Freeport-McMoRan Copper (FCX) has been a big on and off investment of Stone Fox Capital. They currently rank as the top independent producer and the 2nd overall behind Chilean state owned Codelco. FCX has a big lead over BHP Billiton (BHP) as well.
This list further highlights the focus on FCX as a proxy for copper. Without doing a lot of research, the other public companies listed only have a small focus in copper. Number 9 Southern Copper (SCCO) is the only other option that is at least investable on US exchanges. SCCO has a $30B market cap (as of 4/27/11) so it isn’t that small considering the big difference in production as compared to FCX.
* Production numbers are in thousands of metric tons.
Sources:
London-based metals-consulting company CRU, via “World’s 10 Largest Copper Miners Ranked by 2010 Output” Bloomberg.com, 4/26/11
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-26/world-s-10-largest-copper-miners-ranked-by-2010-output-table-.html?cmpid=yhoo
