Capstone Copper Sets a Record US$358 Million Quarter as Mantoverde Expands

A concentrator in Chile's Atacama region set the tone for Capstone Copper's quarter. During a planned shutdown in September, crews tied new equipment into the sulphide plant at Mantoverde, and in October the plant processed a record 53,412 tonnes of ore in a single day, the company said in its third-quarter release of October 29, 2026.

The Mantoverde expansion is the main project Capstone is building this year. Around it, the quarter brought record earnings on lower output, and the company now expects full-year production at the low end of its range.

Price did the lifting in the third quarter

Capstone mines copper at four operations in the Americas: Mantoverde and Mantos Blancos in Chile, Pinto Valley in Arizona and Cozamin in Mexico. It owns 70 per cent of Mantoverde and all of the other three, and reports results in US dollars on a 100 per cent basis.

Adjusted EBITDA, a measure of operating earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and one-off items, was US$358.3 million in the three months to September 30, 2026. The company called it its eighth consecutive quarterly record. Revenue for the quarter ended September 30, 2026 was US$712.0 million.

The driver was price. Capstone realized US$6.61 for each pound of copper it sold in the quarter, against US$4.49 a year earlier and US$6.22 in the second quarter of 2026. It sold 45,409 tonnes of payable copper. The Toronto shares closed at C$11.00 on October 30, 2026, down C$0.77 or 6.54 per cent on 8,920,163 shares traded on the TSX, per TMX Money end-of-day data read at 13:20 Pacific.

Net income attributable to shareholders for the quarter ended September 30, 2026 was US$98.5 million, or US$0.13 a share, down from US$248.1 million a year earlier. The figure for the third quarter of 2025 carried a non-cash impairment reversal of US$209.5 million on the Santo Domingo project, the release noted. Excluding items of that kind, adjusted net income attributable to shareholders for the quarter ended September 30, 2026 rose to US$93.8 million from US$49.4 million.

Output fell 18 per cent, and most of the shortfall came from Arizona

Consolidated production was 45,218 tonnes of contained copper, down 18 per cent from 55,280 tonnes in the third quarter of 2025. The mine-by-mine numbers show where it went.

Mantoverde is shown on a 100 per cent basis, as in the release; Capstone owns 70 per cent. The mine figures sum to 45,219 tonnes because of rounding.

C1 cash cost is the industry's standard measure of what it costs to mine and process a pound of copper, net of by-product credits and before sustaining capital and corporate costs. Consolidated C1 was US$2.95 a pound, up from US$2.42 a year earlier.

Pinto Valley explains much of the move. Its production fell 36 per cent year on year. The rebuild of the primary crusher ran into October, and mill throughput fell 29 per cent to 25,001 tonnes a day. Mobile crushers kept some ore flowing, at about one-third of normal availability, according to the release. Fewer pounds carried the same fixed costs, and Pinto Valley's C1 rose to US$6.11 from US$3.63.

Commissioning of the rebuilt crusher began on October 21 and found additional repairs; Capstone expects the crusher to restart around November 2, the release said.

Mantoverde moved the other way. Its combined C1 fell to US$1.77 from US$2.27, and its sulphide circuit ran at US$0.90 a pound. Sulphide ore is processed into a concentrate that is shipped to smelters; cathode is copper plated out of leached oxide ore at the mine. The sulphide side is the one being expanded, and it is already Capstone's cheapest copper.

Guidance moved to the edges of the range

Capstone now expects 2026 copper production at the low end of 200,000 to 230,000 tonnes and consolidated C1 cash costs at the high end of US$2.45 to US$2.75 a pound. It raised its 2026 capital budget by US$40 million to US$830 million, mainly for capitalized stripping, the cost of removing waste rock to reach ore. Both ranges were unchanged in the second-quarter release of July 30, 2026, when the capital budget stood at US$790 million.

The company's own quarterly releases make the fourth-quarter task countable. Production was 47,960 tonnes in the first quarter, 51,759 tonnes in the second and 45,218 tonnes in the third, a total of 144,937 tonnes. Reaching 200,000 tonnes means about 55,000 tonnes in the fourth quarter, more than any quarter so far this year.

The asset-level guidance in the release shows where Capstone expects those tonnes. Mantoverde sulphides are trending toward the upper end of their range, while Mantoverde cathodes are below the low end. Mantos Blancos and Cozamin are trending to the midpoint, and Pinto Valley is below the low end of its range.

Mantoverde Optimized is about a bigger mill and a longer life

The Mantoverde Optimized project raises sulphide plant throughput from 32,000 to 45,000 tonnes of ore a day. Capstone has said it adds about 20,000 tonnes of copper a year, plus some gold. It also extends the mine life from 19 to 25 years. The capital estimate is unchanged at US$176 million, of which US$107.5 million had been spent by the end of the third quarter.

Sulphide plant throughput averaged 32,975 tonnes a day in the third quarter, with a record monthly average of 40,386 tonnes a day in August, according to the release. Capstone's target is a steady 45,000 tonnes a day from early 2027.

In September Capstone also sanctioned a pyrite augmentation project at Mantoverde, which feeds pyrite ore into the leaching circuit to make more cathode. It expects about US$45 million of capital in 2027 and completion in early 2028. The company put the project's after-tax net present value, discounted at 8 per cent, at about US$200 million on its base-case copper and acid prices, or about US$320 million at spot prices, and expects the project to add about 3,500 tonnes a year of cathode copper and cut heap-leach acid use by about 20 per cent.

A sale, a partner and a decision date

Three transactions shape what Capstone becomes.

The first is Cozamin. On September 21, 2026, Capstone signed a definitive agreement to sell the Mexican mine to Luca Mining Corp. for up to US$385 million, of which US$275 million is cash at closing and the rest is shares, deferred payments and amounts tied to copper prices in 2027 to 2029. The sale had not closed at the date of the release. Capstone expects closing in the fourth quarter of 2026, subject to conditions that include stock exchange and Mexican antitrust approval. Cozamin produced 6,044 tonnes in the third quarter, about 13 per cent of the total, at the lowest C1 of the four mines.

The second is Santo Domingo, a copper project near Mantoverde. Capstone expects a final investment decision, the formal commitment to build, in the first quarter of 2027, against an initial capital estimate of US$2.3 billion in 2023 dollars. Under an agreement announced in October 2025 that had not closed at the date of the release, Orion-managed funds are to acquire 25 per cent of Santo Domingo and the Sierra Norte property for up to US$360 million, including US$225 million payable on a positive investment decision.

The third has closed. In August 2026 Capstone completed the acquisition of the San Pietro concessions for US$25 million in Capstone shares, adding about 16,000 hectares to the Mantoverde-Santo Domingo district.

Management frames these together. "The third quarter was a period of significant progress for Capstone," president and chief executive Cashel Meagher said in the release, pointing to the Mantoverde tie-in and the two portfolio deals. Further out, Capstone expects a pre-feasibility study on Mantos Blancos Phase II in the first quarter of 2027 and production from it in 2030 to 2031, and it has a cobalt plant in feasibility that would initially produce up to 1,500 tonnes a year at Mantoverde.

Net debt came down while free cash flow went negative

Cash and cash equivalents were US$263.4 million at September 30, 2026, down from US$367.1 million at June 30, 2026. Net debt was US$564.0 million at September 30, 2026, against US$780.1 million at December 31, 2025. With US$826.0 million undrawn on its US$1 billion revolving credit facility, the company reported total available liquidity of US$1,089.4 million at September 30, 2026.

Free cash flow from operations was US$63.7 million in the quarter ended September 30, 2026, and free cash flow, after growth capital, was negative US$26.3 million, against positive US$1.6 million a year earlier; for the nine months free cash flow was US$88.6 million, the release said. The chief executive put free cash flow from operations for the nine months to September 30, 2026 at about US$279 million.

Capstone has also hedged part of next year's output. It holds zero-cost collars on about 6,000 tonnes of 2027 copper, with a floor of US$6.00 and a ceiling of US$7.24 a pound. A collar sets a minimum and a maximum price on that copper; the rest of production stays exposed to the market.

The balance-sheet figures here are the release figures as at September 30, 2026; the interim financial statements and MD&A filed on SEDAR+ the same day carry the full detail.

Toronto first, with lines in Sydney and Frankfurt

Capstone trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange as CS and on the Australian Securities Exchange as CSC, and Deutsche Börse lists the same shares in Frankfurt as OUW0 (WKN A3DH8D, ISIN CA14071L1085). The comparison here is with Capstone's own earlier quarters rather than with peers, because those are the figures its releases report on the same basis; the closest outside yardstick is the London Metal Exchange price that sets the floor of US$6.00 and the ceiling of US$7.24 on its 2027 collars.

The fourth quarter carries the year

The price side of Capstone's quarter is plain in the numbers, and so is the expansion side: a record EBITDA, a cheaper sulphide circuit at Mantoverde and a sulphide plant that set a daily throughput record in October. The volume side rests on a crusher in Arizona and on a ramp-up in Chile that the company itself dates to early 2027. Reaching the low end of guidance needs about 55,000 tonnes in the fourth quarter, the largest of the year, and how much of Cozamin's output that quarter keeps depends on a closing date the release does not give.

Pinto Valley's crusher is due back around November 2, Cozamin is set to close in the fourth quarter, and Santo Domingo's investment decision and the Mantos Blancos Phase II study follow in the first quarter of 2027.