Newmont Corporation

Newmont Corporation is the world's largest gold producer and the only gold miner in the S&P 500, operating twelve managed mines and a 38.5 percent interest in the Nevada Gold Mines joint venture across the United States, Canada, Australia, Papua New Guinea, Ghana, Mexico, Argentina, Peru and Suriname. In fiscal 2025 the company sold $22.67 billion of metal and earned $7.09 billion attributable to its shareholders, on an average realised gold price of $3,498 an ounce that was 45 percent higher than the year before.

This is the story of a company that spent a decade buying scale and the last two years learning to live with it. The $13.5 billion all-stock acquisition of Newcrest Mining, closed in November 2023, made Newmont the dominant franchise in its industry; the portfolio optimisation programme that followed sold seven operations and left behind something leaner, better capitalised and, at today's prices, extraordinarily cash generative. The file turns on a single question. How much of the $10.3 billion of operating cash flow the business produced in 2025 is a durable property of Newmont, and how much of it is the gold price wearing a costume?

That question has become urgent rather than academic, because in February 2026 the company committed to a capital allocation framework that pays out essentially everything left over after the dividend and the growth projects have been funded, and it has been buying its own shares at an accelerating pace ever since. The answer to whether that is disciplined or dangerous depends on what you think a normal gold price is — and on whether the operational improvements management has spent two years delivering survive contact with a market that stops helping.