Copper for immediate delivery in London set a record this week. Metal available now costs $545 a tonne more than metal deliverable in three months — the widest such premium since the 2021 squeeze — and London Metal Exchange warehouse stocks have fallen by almost half since mid-May, according to exchange data. Cash copper printed $14,912 a tonne on Wednesday.

The miners moved further than the metal. Over the past month Teck Resources, the Vancouver producer that sold its steelmaking coal business and is now copper-led, gained 21.3%; Hudbay Minerals, a Toronto mid-cap mining copper concentrate in Manitoba and Peru, gained 34.1%; and Freeport-McMoRan, the Phoenix giant that operates the Grasberg district in Indonesia and Morenci in Arizona, gained 18.6%. Copper itself rose about 11% over the same stretch. The gap is the story.

Four sessions did most of the work

Remove each company's two best days and the advance mostly evaporates: Teck drops to +3.8%, Freeport to +5.4%. Only Hudbay survives largely intact, at +14.8%. And the big sessions were not company events. On 21 July the entire complex rose together as the premium of US futures over London metal doubled toward roughly $600 a tonne — Teck, Anglo American, Glencore, Freeport, Southern Copper, Rio Tinto and BHP all climbed. On 6 August the Democratic Republic of Congo's outright ban on copper and cobalt concentrate exports became public, and US futures hit an all-time $6.77 a pound the next day. This week's move came as one participant was shown holding a London cash position equal to 30-40% of registered inventories, with two others between 50% and 80% — a positioning squeeze as much as a demand event.

Teck: the earnings arrived first

Teck is the one name where the business outran the shares. Second-quarter revenue rose 78% to C$3.61bn, about $2.6bn, and gross margin widened to 44.3% from 23.3%. Adjusted EBITDA tripled to $2.2bn at a record 61% margin. Copper output rose 25%, with net unit cash cost improving 19% to $1.64 a pound after by-product credits, and full-year guidance of 455,000-530,000 tonnes was left unchanged.

That delivery compressed the multiple. Teck trades at 9.0x trailing gross profit against roughly 10.3x on 1 May, because trailing gross profit grew 30% while the shares rose 14%. Forward earnings put it at 11.0x, below its trailing 17.8x. The caveat is corporate: the Anglo American merger that underpins the equity story is not closed, with final approval expected between September and March and Chinese clearance outstanding.

Hudbay: gold is doing the arithmetic

Hudbay's headline consolidated cash cost was minus $0.40 a pound last quarter — the company is, on paper, paid to produce copper. That number is manufactured by by-product credits: gold was 38% of gross revenue, and Hudbay attributed its improved full-year cost guidance to those credits offsetting external cost pressure. Sustaining cash cost was $1.39 a pound. Gold rose 3.66% to $4,493 an ounce on Wednesday alone, tracking long-dated Treasuries, and bullion is up around 12% over the month while flat across three.

Underneath, the copper business is decelerating. Revenue growth slowed to 21.4% from 27.3%, and gross margin fell to 41.0% from 48.6% one quarter earlier. The multiple went the other way, expanding about 21% to 12.6x trailing gross profit. Its forward price/earnings of 18.3x sits above the trailing 16.3x, because consensus 2026 earnings of $1.50 a share are below the $1.69 already delivered. Hudbay's own copper growth — roughly 150,000 tonnes in 2027, Copper World from the second half of 2029 — is years out, and the feasibility study is expected to carry capex above the 2023 estimate.

Freeport: the case is entirely 2027

Freeport's reported quarter went backwards. Revenue fell 7.3% to $7.03bn, gross profit fell 15.5% and operating income fell 17.6%. The shares rose anyway, and the multiple expanded about 29% to 14.3x trailing gross profit; on enterprise value to EBITDA it stands at 11.7x, against 7.4x at both Teck and Hudbay.

What investors are paying for is volume that has not shipped. The Grasberg block cave doubled to 69,000 tonnes a day in June from 34,000 in April, second-half copper sales are guided more than 20% above the first half, and 2027 more than 20% above 2026. Management quantifies the price leverage at about $390m of EBITDA per 10-cent move in copper. The tariff angle is thinner than the premium implies: refined cathode remains exempt, with a 15% duty phased in only from January 2027, and Freeport itself dates any benefit to "2027 or later."

The structural demand is real — data centers consume far more copper per rack than conventional servers, and S&P projects global demand rising 50% to 42m tonnes by 2040 against a deficit this year. But none of it explains four sessions in a single month.

The setup

Where it stands — Copper is at a record on a London squeeze; Teck's quarter supports its move, Hudbay's and Freeport's do not. Would confirm — Freeport's second-half copper sales land more than 20% above the first half, as guided. Would invalidate — The London cash premium collapses and copper retreats toward $13,400 a tonne while these multiples hold. Watch next — Hudbay's Copper World definitive feasibility study, due early in the fourth quarter of 2026. Valuation — Teck 9.0x trailing gross profit, 6.0x forward; Hudbay 12.6x; Freeport 14.3x, against 11.1x on 1 May.