John Rubino– Outlook On Q2 Earnings For Gold/Silver Producers, Developers, Royalty Stocks, & Copper

The KE Report Jul 23, 2026

Summary

The guest expects a strong but not record Q2 for gold and silver producers, with average metal prices second-highest on record.

For mining stocks, metal price direction outweighs quarterly results; sector valuations fell to late-2025 levels while margins expanded.

He targets developers with a completed feasibility study, the Lassonde Curve's best entry window before the second leg up.

Royalty companies earn a cut of production without bearing mine costs, yet still fell 20-40%, making smaller names cheap acquisition candidates.

Copper sits near record highs on supply-demand fundamentals, with AI data center buildouts the main risk to sentiment.

The guest uses Kinross as the acquirer in the Great Bear Resources deal, saying it stepped in on drill results and paid up - in his view roughly two years ahead of where Great Bear sat on the Lassonde Curve.
He has a lowball bid in on Kinross, chiefly to stay exposed to Great Bear, which he thinks may now be reaching the development stage it previously lacked.

The guest argues Newmont is the most obvious large buyer in precious metals right now - declining production, high cash flow and acquisition targets down 40-60% all point that way - even though it has not acted yet.
Newmont reports Q2 after the close on Thursday 2026-07-23, kicking off the sector's earnings week, after guiding to slightly higher costs and lower expectations almost across the board, which the host describes as normal for a Q2.
The guest expects investors to react more to the gold and silver price on the day than to Newmont's quarter-on-quarter margins.
He attributes the pause in deals to the industry's history of empire-building takeovers at cycle peaks, but expects that restraint to break if cash flow stays at Q2 levels.
On last year's divestments, the host notes Newmont judged them worth selling at those prices and is therefore unlikely to want them back.

The guest counts Franco-Nevada among the large royalty names that lost 20-40% in the correction, and argues the drop is hard to justify: a mine's cost structure is nearly irrelevant to a royalty, so cash keeps flowing as long as the mines keep producing.
He expects the big royalty companies, which are generating a lot of cash, to do mergers of equals or outright takeouts over the next year.
He says the smaller royalty players trade at a much bigger discount to net asset value than the big names even after the correction, so moving down the food chain is reasonably safe.
He sees several of the smaller royalty names as three-baggers if acquired, and says investors should hold royalty companies, more of them rather than fewer.

The guest says Wheaton, like the other large royalty names, fell 20-40% in the latest correction even though royalties are largely insulated from mine operating costs - a move he sees as making the group interesting.
He remains positive on the royalty model overall, expecting cash-rich large royalty companies to pursue M&A and favouring smaller names trading below net asset value.

The guest describes Sitka as a Yukon version of Snowline Gold - an explorer that has found a deposit and is now working through the slow feasibility stage.
That implies a longer wait for the next leg up, which is why he wants explorers within roughly six months of their next catalyst rather than ones still two or three years away.

The guest uses Snowline as his main example of the Lassonde Curve: after a 2024 run of four to five times on strong drill results, the stock has traded sideways while the company spends a couple of years proving the deposit is feasible.
He says the speculative money that drove the 2024 spike has already drifted away, leaving the stock in a range he calls boring well off its highs.
In his view the next leg only starts once a favourable feasibility study is delivered, after which the stock can run toward either production or a takeover premium - so he expects to wait longer on Snowline in particular.
That Snowline case is what prompted his recent Substack post applying the Lassonde Curve to where explorers sit in their lifecycle.

Top takeaway He frames gold and silver as long-run certainties - $10,000 gold and $200 silver - and says today's producer prices barely matter against that, so he wants to be an opportunistic buyer of the miners whenever weakness offers.
Ahead of Q2 results he expects a varied but very good set of numbers: not record like Q1, but cash generation that would rank high for the past decade, with any sharper-than-deserved drop an invitation to add.
His preferred corner is royalties, which were cut 30-40% along with the sector while their economics barely changed; he sees the smaller names as cheap against net asset value and as likely three-baggers if a cash-rich larger company takes them out.
He publishes a Lassonde Curve framework for explorers: buy the second leg, after a strong feasibility study but before the market pays attention, and screen for managements that have already built mines successfully.
He expects an aggressive M&A wave if Q2-level cash flow persists - good news for holders of likely targets, but a reminder of the industry's history of empire building and stranded assets at cycle tops.