Monday Mining Minutes: 2Q‘CY26 production result surprises – mostly in line/beats

Research evidence excerpt

Monday Mining Minutes: 2Q‘CY26 production result surprises – mostly in line/beats

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03 Aug 2026 00:00:26 ET │ 15 pages

Monday Mining Minutes

2Q’CY26 production result surprises – mostly in line/beats

CITI'S TAKE Ephrem Ravi AC

+44-20-7986-2462

MUSINGS – The production results season for 2Q26 continued to be in

line/stronger vs consensus/CitiE for the miners under our coverage. This ephrem.ravi@citi.com

was also evident in the stock price reactions which were positively skewed. Shashi Shekhar, CFA

Big positive price reactions were from South32, Glencore, Frensillo and +91-22-4277-5028

Northam Platinum. Previously, 1Q26 production results also came in shashi.shekhar@citi.com

stronger vs consensus/CitiE for the miners under our coverage. (link).

Krishan M Agarwal

In line with the production performance, the overall earnings revisions were mostly +44-020-7986-4092

not meaningful/positive (five “not meaningful”, three “positive”, and three krishan.agarwal@citi.com

“negative”) following the results. Apart from the production results, change in

commodity price estimates also played an important part in the earnings revisions.

The key takeaways of 2Q results are: 1) most of the European miners showed

resilient earnings and delivered overall marginally stronger operating performance

q/q; and 2) most of them have also broadly maintained their operational guidance

with big diversified miners upgrading their cost guidance (BHP/RIO/AAL).

MINERS — 1H26 results for RIO came in largely in-line with reported EBITDA at

$14.8 billion, +28% y/y. Copper and aluminium business came in with better-than-

expected EBITDA, partially offset by slight weakness in iron ore and lithium.

Underlying EPS at $4.21 also came in 8% ahead of the VA consensus estimates.