World's Largest Moly Producer Reports

Morning Miners!

I'm listening to the earnings conference call from Freeport McMoran (FCX) as I write this morning's article. Although FCX has no active mining interests in Eureka County, they are an important bellwether company because their operations span copper, gold and they are presently the world's largest producer of molybdenum. The ole Colonel has included an FCX link to the "Miner's Corner" on the right side of this blog. You can find a link to their earnings report for the first quarter of 2009 on the FCX homepage.

Here is a brief summary comparing their year-to-year production and sales:

Copper production down 15.5% sales down 10.7%
Gold production down 53.8% sales down 48.6%
Moly production down 22.2% sales down 50.0%

FCX reports these declines in the face of global downturn but remains very positive about copper and moly when the recovery gets new legs. They didn't commit to a time frame but cited the importance of China for both copper and moly, a common theme of this report. If you have the time, checkout their presentation for an insightful account of what the future may hold for the metals that are so important to Eureka.

Here are some upcoming first quarter conference calls for the big mines in our area:

Barrick (ABX) 4/29 before market open
Newmont (NEM) 4/30 10:00am (ET)
General Moly (GMO) not scheduled

Enough talk, let's walk the walk:

Oil is pretty flat at $48.62 (June contract). The dollar ("Dixie" or .DXY) is down down 0.43% to 86.128. The commodity index (.CRB) is down 0.26% to 217.74.

Gold is continuing to move up slowly, up $3.7 to $886.4 (June contract); Silver stays above $12 at $12.24; Copper is steady at $2.084; Molybdenum still meanders below $8.

The DOW is up 52 points to 8020.85; the S&P 500, up 6.7 points to 856.79. Miners are mixed, FCX is up nicely which is a very good sign for the metals:

Barrick (ABX) $28.72 up 1.81%
Newmont (NEM) $38.77 down 0.26%
General Moly (GMO) $1.541 down 3.08%
Quadra (QUA.T) C$5.87 up 5.58%
Freeport McMoran (FCX) $39.17 is up 2.36% (a bellwether mining stock spanning gold, copper & molybdenum)

Steel stocks rock today (good news for General Moly):

Nucor (NUE) 44.52 up 3.39% - domestic steel manufacturing
ArcelorMittal (MT) 27.30 up 3.41% - global steel producer

Cheers,

Colonel Possum