John Rubino, {Substack https://rubino.substack.com/}, joins us for another wide-ranging discussion around the strong financial health of the gold and silver producers and royalty companies as we head into Q2 earnings season later this week. We also discuss his outlook on the potential for more mergers and acquisitions, what stage of developer he is animated by, his outlook on royalty stocks, and the copper sector.
While Q2 earnings are not going to be as big as the record underlying metals prices seen in Q1, John believes the gold and silver producers will still report very solid revenues, because the average metals prices were the 2nd highest of any other quarter in history.
The caveat is that with the overall sector trend having been lower for the last 6 months in the underlying gold and silver prices, that this is what ultimately affects investor sentiment and stock price direction. The metals price direction is seemingly more germane than strong fundamentals, earnings, or value creation.We debate whether the valuations in PM producers, which are now down closer to where they were back in Q3 and Q4 2025 are at a mismatch, considering the margins were still much larger in Q2 than those quarters. Many PM producers crashed down 40%-60% during the exact same time that they still generated near-record revenues and cashflows on their balance sheets.We discuss where all that cash piling up has been going over the last few quarters as a return of capital to shareholders in share buybacks, new or increasing dividends, and why we aren’t seeing even more merger and acquisition transactions in this kind of environment.John then distinguishes between the boring versus the opportune time to accumulate quality PM developers, to maximize the 2nd leg of the Lassonde Curve.
There is a typical lull in quality exploration stocks once they put out a resource estimate and put early-stage PEA economics on a project. Early-stage developers then face years of permitting, metallurgical and engineering studies, definition drilling, and the boring “orphan phase” of the Lassonde Curve; when speculators lose interest and rotate out to go chase other short-term catalysts.John likes to focus on companies once they already have a compelling Feasibility Study in place and are closer to the construction decision, increasing their likelihood to become a takeover target by a larger company.In general, John is more skeptical of explorers that become developers having the skillsets to build mines on their own, but he stresses that it really comes down to analyzing the management teams for their past track records, and the capabilities of their board and team.Some select smaller to mid-tier producers, that bought divested mines from the majors, can also use those cashflows from operations at these higher metals prices to fuel and fund the progress on key flagship development projects.Next, we point out how the royalty companies, that don’t have cost creep due to rising energy expenses or large labor costs, have still been chopped down by 30%-40% along with the rest of the PM sector; which makes little sense from a valuation standpoint.
John feels this is a prime example of an inefficient market where the fall in share prices and market caps creates a growing value proposition.He’ll be using low-ball bids and weakness in the royalty stocks to keep accumulating.His outlook is that we will continue to see a number of potential M&A deals in the royalty stocks, and this gives him comfort to go down the food chain into the mid-tier and smaller stocks, as they likely will be acquired by large companies with a better valuation multiple in the fullness of time.Wrapping up we review the continued strength in the copper price, holding up near all-time highs, and why he remains longer-term bullish due to supply/demand fundamentals.
The caveat John mentions is that if there is a softening in AI data center buildouts, or if the Chinese AI platforms compete with domestic AI platforms, or if we see the lofty valuations in US equities roll over hard, in the near to medium-term, then this could also pressure copper and copper stocks to the downside.Click here to follow John’s analysis and articles over at Substack
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