Newmont posts record third-quarter profit as gold rally offsets rising costs

Newmont Corporation, the world's largest gold producer, reported record third-quarter adjusted profit on Thursday, as bullion prices that averaged more than $4,200 an ounce overwhelmed rising production costs and falling output at several of its mines. The Denver-based company's own earnings release, furnished to the Securities and Exchange Commission, showed net income attributable to shareholders of $2.48 billion, or $2.35 a diluted share, for the three months ended September 30.

On an adjusted basis, which strips out one-time items, Newmont earned $2.20 a share, beating the average analyst estimate of $2.05 compiled by LSEG, and revenue rose 15 percent from a year earlier to $6.36 billion, according to a Reuters report carried by BNN Bloomberg. The company confirmed both figures in the cover filing accompanying its earnings release, furnished to the SEC the same day.

A quarter built on a gold price near record highs

Gold itself averaged $4,204.59 an ounce during the quarter, up about 17.6 percent from a year earlier, as investors sought a safe haven amid a stronger dollar and inflation worries tied to higher oil prices, the Reuters account said. Newmont's own average realized price, which reflects its sales mix and hedging, came in slightly higher, at $4,317 an ounce, according to the company's release — though that was $97 below what it realized in the second quarter, when bullion briefly traded even higher before correcting.

The quarter capped a volatile year for gold. Prices touched a record above $5,000 an ounce in January before a sharp correction in the spring, then climbed again through the summer on continued central-bank buying before easing back toward $4,000 in recent weeks. That swing has made Newmont's results this year unusually sensitive to the metal's path: the company has said each $100 move in the gold price changes its annual pretax results by roughly $505 million.

Free cash flow for the quarter was $1.91 billion, a third-quarter record for the company even though it was down 13 percent from the second quarter. Newmont ended the period with $8.8 billion in cash and net cash of $3.2 billion, and it returned about $1.9 billion to shareholders since its last earnings call, including $1.6 billion in share buybacks, leaving $2.8 billion of its $6 billion repurchase authorization unused. The board also declared a quarterly dividend of $0.26 a share, payable December 21.

Costs are climbing even as profit grows

The earnings beat did not stop Newmont shares from falling. The stock closed down 2.6 percent at $114.11 on the day of the report, then slipped further over the following session as investors focused less on the headline profit than on the company's cost trajectory. Newmont raised its full-year all-in sustaining cost guidance to about $1,520 an ounce — roughly 10 percent above the target it set at the start of 2026 — and said it expects fourth-quarter costs to jump to around $1,900 an ounce, driven by higher sustaining capital spending and an expected sharp drop in silver output at its Peñasquito mine in Mexico.

Production also continued to run below year-earlier levels, a pattern that has held in every quarter of 2026 as Newmont has pared its portfolio following its 2023 acquisition of Newcrest Mining. The company sold its Northumberland project in Nevada to StrikePoint Gold earlier this month, and its Cadia mine in Australia is still recovering from a seismic event in the second quarter that briefly suspended underground operations there; Cadia's output improved to 61,000 ounces in the third quarter from 34,000 in the second, the company said, even as per-ounce costs at the mine rose. Copper output, a smaller part of Newmont's business, climbed 35 percent from the prior quarter to 23,000 tonnes as Cadia came back online.

• Adjusted earnings per share: $2.20, versus a $2.05 analyst estimate
• Revenue: $6.36 billion, up 15 percent year over year
• Free cash flow: $1.91 billion, a third-quarter record
• Full-year sustaining-cost guidance raised to roughly $1,520 an ounce

Who feels the swings

The results matter well beyond Newmont's own shareholders. As the largest component of the VanEck Gold Miners ETF, the company's stock moves often ripple through a broad swath of mining-focused mutual funds and retirement accounts. Mining communities in Nevada, Ghana, Peru, Australia and Mexico depend on Newmont's investment decisions and employment levels, and the governments of Canada and British Columbia have a direct financial stake in one of the company's biggest pending commitments: a planned underground expansion at the Red Chris mine.

Newmont said it is advancing toward a final investment decision in early 2027 on the Red Chris Block Cave project, a joint venture in which it holds a 70 percent stake alongside Imperial Metals. The project is expected to produce roughly 3 million ounces of gold and more than 850,000 tonnes of copper over an initial 13-year mine life, with commercial production targeted for 2033. Development capital is estimated at $4.2 billion to $4.8 billion on a 100 percent basis, net of an expected C$500 million contribution from the Canadian government, the Reuters report said.

The company also disclosed it is amending its Nevada Gold Mines joint venture with rival Barrick Mining, adding Barrick's Fourmile property in exchange for two Newmont properties, and that it will pay Barrick $1.95 billion in the fourth quarter as part of the arrangement — a transaction that will eat into the net cash position Newmont reported this week.

Reaction, and what comes next

Asked on the earnings call about speculation that Newmont might bid for Australia's Northern Star Resources, chief executive Natascha Viljoen said the company was not interested, arguing its own operations already offer better returns than an acquisition would.

"It is really hard to find anything better than what we have internally in our own operations," Viljoen said, according to the Reuters account of the call.

That stance underscores a broader question facing Newmont and its gold-mining peers heading into year-end: whether to keep returning record cash flow to shareholders through buybacks and dividends, or redeploy more of it into costly, decade-long projects like Red Chris at a moment when the gold price that is funding those returns has already pulled back from its highs. Newmont's quarterly report filed with the SEC, formally a Form 10-Q for the period ended September 30, 2026, flags the risk directly, warning that further declines in metal prices or increases in operating costs could pressure future results.

The next test for the stock, and for gold more broadly, is likely to come quickly. The Federal Reserve's policy announcement on October 28 is widely seen by traders as the next catalyst for bullion prices, which were trading just above $4,000 an ounce this week after retreating from this year's record highs. Newmont's own 2026 guidance assumes an average gold price of $4,500 an ounce for the full year, a level the metal has not consistently traded at since midyear — meaning the company's fourth-quarter results, due early next year, will depend heavily on where prices settle between now and then.