Monday Mining Minutes: Earnings momentum stalls on reduced macro visibility

Research evidence excerpt

Monday Mining Minutes: Earnings momentum stalls on reduced macro visibility

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27 Jul 2026 00:00:12 ET │ 17 pages

Monday Mining Minutes

Earnings momentum stalls on reduced macro visibility

CITI'S TAKE Ephrem Ravi AC

+44-20-7986-2462

MUSINGS – Though miners’ share price performance tends to be correlated

with the earnings momentum (albeit with a lag), stocks generally trough ephrem.ravi@citi.com

before earnings momentum troughs and peak before earnings momentum Shashi Shekhar, CFA

peaks. Between Sept 2025 and Feb 2026 consensus earnings estimates for +91-22-4277-5028

the sector have moved upwards in line with the miners’ stock prices which shashi.shekhar@citi.com

in turn were governed by rising commodity prices. That said the earnings

momentum has stalled since the Middle East conflict began in late Feb. We Krishan M Agarwal

observed some improvement on US/Iran ceasefire in June, but the earnings +44-020-7986-4092

momentum was lost again as the conflict reignited lately. krishan.agarwal@citi.com

This suggests consensus is taking a cautious approach on the sector which looks

justified as the fluidity of geopolitical events leaves us with less visibility over the

medium-term. The above view is also supported by our recent findings – (i) the

mining sector has derated vs the broader market (link), (ii) the summer seasonal dip

greater than average this year (link) and, (iii) market pricing in lower commodity

prices for big diversified miners (link).

MINERS — Our earnings expectations going into 1H’FY26 results for SA diversified

miners are mixed with ARI, TGA and EXX likely seeing higher EBITDA y/y due to

higher PGM/thermal coal pricing, while KIO should see lower earnings due to lower

US$ realized iron ore prices (FOB). We flag that headwinds from stronger rand and