Newmont's Q2 2026 sales rose 15% to $6.12B as a 33% higher realized gold price ($4,414/oz) outweighed 13% fewer ounces sold; net income rose 7% to $2.20B ($2.06/share), with adjusted EPS up 47% to $2.10 despite AISC climbing 22% on the Cadia shutdown and weak Ahafo South and Peñasquito output.
Revenue
$6.1B
+15.1% YoY
Net income
$2.2B
+6.8% YoY
Diluted EPS
$2.06
+11.4% YoY
Operating margin
50.6%
Headline: a $1,094 jump in the gold price outran a 13% drop in ounces sold
Newmont, the world's largest gold miner, earned $2.20 billion in net income attributable to shareholders in the second quarter of 2026 ($2.06 per diluted share), against $2.06 billion ($1.85) a year earlier. Sales rose 15% to $6.12 billion, even though the company sold 1.195 million ounces of gold, 13% fewer than the 1.380 million it sold in Q2 2025. The reason is price: Newmont received an average of $4,414 per ounce of gold, up from $3,320, a 33% increase.
The headline 7% rise in net income understates the improvement. Q2 2025 included a $699 million gain on selling mines (Porcupine and Akyem, part of the divestment program the company completed in 2025). This quarter had almost no such gain ($5 million). On Newmont's adjusted measure, which strips out one-off items like that, EPS rose 47%, from $1.43 to $2.10.
This quarter also had three problems at the mine level: an earthquake-related shutdown at Cadia in Australia, a 49% production drop at Ahafo South in Ghana, and a 75% drop in gold output at Peñasquito in Mexico. Together they explain most of the lost ounces and most of the rise in cost per ounce.
Key figures
Metric
Q2 2026
Q2 2025
YoY Change
Sales (revenue)
$6,118M
$5,317M
+15.1%
Operating income (sales minus costs and expenses)*
$3,096M
$3,068M
+0.9%
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Gold all-in sustaining cost (AISC) per ounce, co-product
$1,938
$1,593
+21.7%
Realized gold price minus AISC (margin per ounce)
$2,476
$1,727
+43.4%
*Newmont doesn't report an "operating income" line. The figure here is Sales minus the "Costs and expenses" total on its income statement, and that total includes the gain on asset sales. Production figures above exclude Newmont's equity-accounted stakes in Pueblo Viejo (40%) and Fruta del Norte (32%), which added another 112 koz attributable (101 koz a year ago). Including them gives the "1.3 million attributable ounces" the company headlines.
What AISC means: all-in sustaining cost is the gold industry's closest thing to a per-ounce break-even. It adds up the day-to-day cost of mining and processing the ore, plus royalties, the capital spending needed just to keep existing mines running (not to grow them), corporate overhead, and some exploration and reclamation costs. It then divides the total by ounces sold. The gap between the gold price and AISC is roughly what each ounce contributes before taxes, interest and growth spending.
Price vs. volume: where the extra $801 million of sales came from
Newmont's own sales bridge splits the change in gold revenue into two parts:
Gold sales driver (Q2 2026 vs. Q2 2025)
Impact
Higher average realized gold price
+$1,304M
Fewer gold ounces sold
-$615M
Lower treatment and refining charges
+$5M
Net change in gold sales
+$694M
So the price effect was more than twice the size of the volume loss. The other metals Newmont mines alongside gold showed the same pattern.
Silver: sales rose $153 million to $344 million. The realized price was $53.49/oz against $29.50, and $154 million of the increase came from price alone.
Copper: sales fell $41 million to $319 million. Copper sold dropped from 83 million pounds to 46 million, mostly because of Cadia. That cost $156 million, which the higher copper price ($6.82/lb vs. $4.37) only partly offset.
Gold prices were not rising throughout the quarter, though. The realized price includes a $51-per-ounce reduction for provisional pricing, which is the adjustment on shipments that are priced after delivery, and it means gold fell toward quarter-end. Newmont's first-half average was $4,661/oz. Subtracting Q2 from the first half implies roughly $4,900/oz in Q1, so Q2's price was about 10% lower than the previous quarter. Sequentially, sales fell from about $7.3 billion in Q1 to $6.1 billion.
Why cost per ounce rose about 21%
Total costs applicable to sales were roughly flat at $2,088 million (vs. $2,001 million). The management discussion describes them as "generally in line with the same period in 2025." Cost per ounce still rose sharply, because the same costs were spread over fewer ounces. The site detail in the filing shows where.
Cadia (Australia): gold production fell 67% to 34 koz after seismic activity on April 14, 2026 halted underground mining. Surface stockpiles kept the mill running until May 11, and underground mining resumed in mid-June "on a progressive ramp-up." AISC per ounce rose 184% to $3,151. $28 million of idle-time costs went into Other expense rather than mining costs, and production is expected back to pre-event levels in Q3.
Ahafo South (Ghana): production fell 49% to 100 koz "due to lower ore grade milled and lower mill throughput" (lower grade means less gold per tonne of rock). AISC rose 113% to $2,604. The company also cites higher government royalties.
Peñasquito (Mexico): gold production fell 75% to 37 koz because of mine sequencing, which took the mill through lower-grade ore, and higher organic carbon in the feed, which hurts recovery. AISC per gold ounce rose 174% to $2,589.
Offsets: Ahafo North in Ghana, which started commercial production in Q4 2025, added 68 koz at a $1,485 AISC. Merian (Suriname) production rose 40% on higher grades, and Cerro Negro (Argentina) rose 17% on higher throughput. Nevada Gold Mines, the joint venture with Barrick, was flat at 240 koz.
There are two more cost pressures, and both are tied to gold itself. Royalties and Peru's workers' participation (a legally mandated profit share) rise automatically with the gold price. The filing cites this at Yanacocha, Boddington and elsewhere. Some of the rise in gold's cost per ounce is also an accounting effect. On January 1, 2026, Newmont raised the gold price it uses to convert copper, silver, lead and zinc into "gold equivalent ounces" from $1,700 to $4,000. As a result, more of the shared mining cost at multi-metal mines is now allocated to gold. The 10-Q says this results in "particularly... higher costs allocated to gold." That makes the co-product AISC in the table look worse against 2025 than the underlying cash cost trend would suggest.
AISC in the press release is lower. The Q2 earnings release headlines a by-product AISC of $1,621/oz. That method subtracts co-product revenue (silver, copper, etc.) from gold's costs rather than splitting costs between metals. The 10-Q's $1,938 is on a co-product basis. The release compares the by-product figure with full-year guidance of $1,680/oz, and on that basis costs are tracking below guidance.
Below the operating line
Investment marks: Other income swung from a $115 million gain to a $62 million loss. The main reason is $111 million of unrealized losses on marketable equity securities, which are shares Newmont holds in other companies. These are paper losses, and the adjusted EPS figure excludes them.
Equity income from affiliates, mainly Pueblo Viejo and Lundin Gold, rose to $204 million from $49 million, lifted by the same higher gold prices.
Tax: the effective tax rate fell to 32% from 35%. Ghana's rate rose to 46% because Newmont's tax stability agreement there expired on December 31, 2025. That lifted the headline corporate rate from 32.5% to 35%, and a new sliding-scale royalty of 5–12% of gold revenue took effect in March.
Interest expense fell to $35 million from $65 million, "due to the reduction in Debt and an increase in capitalized interest."
Share count: diluted shares fell 4% to 1,067 million from 1,112 million after buybacks. That is why EPS grew faster than net income.
Cash: the gold price shows up in the bank
Across the first half, operating cash flow was $6.71 billion, up 52% from $4.42 billion. Free cash flow was $5.35 billion, against $2.92 billion. Free cash flow is operating cash flow minus capital spending, which is the cash actually available to return to shareholders or pay down debt. The release puts Q2 free cash flow alone at a record $2.2 billion for a second quarter, helped by a $90 million favorable working-capital swing that management warns "may partially reverse."
Newmont bought back $3.46 billion of its own stock in the first half, plus another $606 million in July. It ended June with $9.0 billion in cash against $5.08 billion of debt, a net cash position of $3.41 billion. That is above the company's own $1 billion ± $2 billion target range, so more capital returns remain affordable. The Q2 dividend is $0.26 per share, and $4.3 billion remains under the $6 billion buyback authorized in April.
Takeaway: This quarter Newmont made more money from fewer ounces. Its per-ounce margin (realized price minus AISC) widened 43% to about $2,476, even though unit costs rose over 20% because of three problem mines. The profits now depend on the gold price far more than on operations. The same gold price also pushes up royalties and profit-sharing costs, so part of each price gain goes back out as higher costs.
Outlook
Management guidance (unchanged from February): 5.26 million attributable ounces for 2026 (±5%), by-product AISC of $1,680/oz, $1.95 billion of sustaining capital and $1.4 billion of development capital. Management expects production to be about 51% weighted to the second half. Q3 production should be "broadly in line with second quarter production." Unit costs are expected to rise in Q3 because of higher sustaining capital spending, and "will continue to be sensitive to royalties driven by the gold price." Development capital spending should step up sharply, with 63% of the year's total in the second half, partly because Cadia spending was deferred by the seismic event.
Our read: First-half attributable production, including the equity stakes, was 2.59 Moz (2,390 koz managed/NGM plus 204 koz from Pueblo Viejo and Fruta del Norte). That is 49% of the 5.26 Moz target, exactly the first-half share management planned for, so the full-year volume goal looks achievable if Cadia's ramp-up holds. Three things to watch:
Gold price direction: Q2's realized price was about 10% below Q1's, and the negative provisional-pricing adjustment means gold was weaker at quarter-end. With costs near $1,900–2,000/oz on a co-product basis, margins remain very wide. Still, a small move in the gold price does more to earnings than any operating change.
Cadia and Peñasquito recovery: both are big-volume assets that turned into high-cost ones this quarter. Cadia's return to pre-event output in Q3 is the single largest operating factor for the second half.
Governance and policy risk: Newmont sent Barrick a notice of default in February 2026 alleging mismanagement at Nevada Gold Mines, its largest asset at 240 koz a quarter. In Ghana, the royalty and tax changes rise with the gold price and will take a larger share of Ahafo's profits as prices rise.
Capital spending is set to rise in H2, and the working-capital boost may partly reverse. Q3 free cash flow is therefore likely to come in below Q2's record even if the gold price holds. With $3.4 billion of net cash, that would not threaten the buyback pace.