I’ve never been more enthusiastic on the outlook for copper, says Freeport-McMoRan CEO

I’ve never been more enthusiastic on the outlook for copper, says Freeport-McMoRan CEO

I’m shares of minor free Port macaran
falling today despite topping Wall
Street estimates for our first quarter
profit strong gold and copper prices
helping boost results the stock ending
about 2% lower today as copper Futures
pulled back perhaps some profit taking
uh in that market joining us now
Freeport macaran chairman and CEO
Richard aderson Richard it’s so great to
have you on thanks for joining us good
to be on Morgan good to see you so I do
want to start with the fact that we saw
copper production increase in the first
quarter copper sales were up 33% year
on-year
which was above guidance as well you and
I have had this conversation about a
long-term mismatch in the market as we
do see some of these secular growth
Trends around things like
electrification infrastructure now you
could even argue digitization with
things like data centers are we starting
to see that
materialize clearly I mean copper prices
have moved up from roughly the 370 a
pound level to uh 440 or so now and uh
the tone of the market Market from
people who follow it closely are
reflecting more of the positions that
we’ve been talking about for such a long
time the fundamentals for copper are
very good both from a demand standpoint
and the challenges in in in in meeting
supplies so when we talk about Dr copper
I mean we we also talk about how it’s a
barometer for the health of the global
economy what are we seeing how is China
factoring
in well China is important to the market
for copper it consumes more than 50% of
of the copper within China and going
into 2023 there was a massive concern
about China because of its issues in the
property sector but China end up having
growth during 2023 from investments in
its grid and then uh the green economy
and so forth and and the outlook for
China is better it still has its
question marks but today’s world is
different it doesn’t rely totally on
China for growth growth in the
development world is coming about from
the factors you just mentioned as well
as continued growth in the less
developed world so the outlook for
copper is is very positive I’ve never
been more enthusiastic about it okay how
do you navigate and I guess drisk for a
year that is Rife with politics and
geopolitics not just here State side but
also in key markets like for example
Indonesia uh where you have a big
operation yeah no question I mean U
politics and in in a number of countries
around the world are very complicated uh
at the end of the day ours is a very
long-term business I mean it takes U
many years to develop new production uh
to add new production online and then
when you do develop mins they have
Decades of life and so we just have to
uh have a long-term focus on our
business the key to our business is exe
execution execution execution and that’s
been a Hallmark of Freeport we’ve been
able to execute our business plans very
effectively and this quarter showed that
have to ask about gold because you don’t
just pull copper out of the ground you
pull gold out of the ground we’ve seen
it trading at record highs your
outlook gold for us is a byproduct of
our major copper mine in New in in Papa
and Indonesia uh it is among the very
largest single gold min in the world and
it’s an important factor in the
profitability of that mine in this most
recent quarter our gold production with
the current High gold price was uh
sufficiently large to cover all of our
operating costs for that mine and that’s
the second largest copper mine in the
world so it’s important but it’s not in
in terms of our Consolidated totals it’s
less than 10% of our revenues but it’s
important byproduct factor for that mine

Richard Adkerson, Freeport-McMoRan CEO, joins ‘Closing Bell Overtime’ to talk the global commodity supply chain, metal commodity demand, markets in China and more.