Newmont stock prediction: NEM bull flag could open a path to new all-time highs, but patience matters
Newmont stock has suddenly become one of the more interesting large-cap mining charts I am watching.
NEM closed Friday at $112.98 after gaining more than 20% on the weekly candle, following an aggressive reversal from the lower boundary of a descending channel that has contained the stock since its early-2026 peak.
My read is bullish, but with an important qualification: the potential weekly bull flag has not broken out yet.
If Newmont can eventually clear and hold above roughly $118-$120, the technical picture changes substantially. That could put $124-$126 back in play first, followed by a challenge of the $131-$135 all-time-high area.
Patience matters here. After such a powerful weekly candle, I am more interested in whether bulls can complete the pattern than in chasing the first burst higher.
There is also a fundamental reason to pay attention. Newmont’s latest earnings showed a company generating enormous cash flow from high gold prices, returning capital aggressively to shareholders and maintaining its 2026 production guidance despite an operational disruption at Cadia. At the same time, costs are rising and management expects some of that pressure to persist into the third quarter.
Key takeaways for Newmont stock investors and traders
- Weekly NEM trend: Constructive after an aggressive rebound from the lower boundary of the descending channel.
- Potential pattern: A large weekly bull flag following the powerful 2025 to early-2026 advance.
- Main breakout zone: Approximately $118-$120.
- First upside area after confirmation: Approximately $124-$126.
- Major objective: The $131-$135 prior-high and all-time-high region.
- Earnings surprise: Q2 adjusted EPS beat expectations, although revenue came in below consensus.
- Cash generation: Newmont produced $2.2 billion of Q2 free cash flow, a record for a second quarter.
- Important risk: Q2 AISC jumped to $1,621 per ounce, and management expects unit costs to increase again in Q3.
- Macro catalysts: Gold prices, US CPI, interest-rate expectations, China gold demand, oil prices and Middle East developments all matter for NEM.
What makes the NEM weekly chart so interesting?
Look at the chart from a distance. The weekly chart of NEM for this stock analysis:
Newmont rose dramatically from roughly $55 in mid-2025 to around $135 in early 2026. Since then, however, the stock has not simply collapsed. It has spent months working lower inside a relatively orderly downward-sloping channel.
That distinction matters.
A downward channel following a powerful advance can sometimes develop into a bull flag, where a market digests earlier gains before attempting another leg higher.
But simply drawing two parallel lines does not make something a bull flag. Buyers ultimately have to prove the thesis by breaking through the upper boundary.
What caught my attention this week is where the latest buying appeared.
NEM traded down to $92.97, very close to the lower portion of the channel, and then reversed sharply to finish the week at $112.98.
The bulls did not buy somewhere randomly in the middle of the pattern.
They became extremely aggressive near the lower pane of the channel.
That is exactly where I would want to see strong demand if this larger bullish structure is going to survive.
Now comes the harder part.
What level could activate the Newmont weekly bull flag?
The upper boundary of the descending structure currently comes into the vicinity of approximately $118-$120.
That makes this the most important area on my NEM chart.
I would not call the bull flag activated merely because NEM approaches $118 or briefly trades through it. The cleaner signal would be a convincing breakout, followed ideally by evidence that the former resistance area can hold.
What this means: A bull flag breakout becomes more credible when price gets above the descending resistance line and stays there, rather than briefly poking above it before falling back inside the channel.
That distinction may prove especially important after this week’s very large candle.
NEM has already travelled a long way in a short period. There is no requirement for the stock to break out immediately.
Some consolidation underneath resistance could actually be constructive.
For traders, this is an important lesson: a bullish chart does not automatically mean a good price to chase.
The market can have an attractive destination and still offer a poor short-term entry.
Newmont stock price levels to watch
The bullish scenario becomes much more interesting above $118-$120. But until the breakout actually occurs, the stock remains inside the channel.
Newmont’s Q2 earnings contained an important surprise
There is another reason I would not look at the NEM chart in isolation.
The latest earnings were better than the headline revenue number might suggest.
Newmont reported adjusted EPS of $2.10. Reuters reported that the average LSEG estimate was $1.99, meaning profitability exceeded expectations. Zacks used a somewhat higher EPS consensus of $2.05, but also recorded the result as a beat. At the same time, revenue of approximately $6.12 billion came in below consensus estimates around $6.35 billion.
That makes Q2 a useful investor-education case.
An earnings report does not have to be either “beat” or “miss.”
Different parts of the report can tell different stories:
- Revenue can disappoint.
- Earnings can beat.
- Production can decline.
- Costs can increase.
- Cash flow can remain exceptionally strong.
- Guidance can remain intact.
That is almost exactly what happened here.
For investors, the lesson is to go one level deeper than the headline EPS number.
The more impressive surprise may have been Newmont’s cash flow
Newmont generated $2.9 billion of operating cash flow and $2.2 billion of free cash flow in Q2. The company described that as record second-quarter free cash flow.
There is an interesting wrinkle.
Free cash flow actually fell from $3.14 billion in Q1 to $2.21 billion in Q2, a decline of roughly 30%. Yet Q2 free cash flow was still well above the $1.71 billion generated in the comparable 2025 quarter.
That teaches another useful lesson:
Sequential deterioration and absolute weakness are not the same thing.
Q1 was extraordinarily strong. A decline from an exceptional quarter does not automatically make Q2 poor.
For longer-term shareholders, free cash flow matters because it is ultimately what gives a miner the capacity to reduce debt, build cash, repurchase stock, pay dividends and fund new projects.
And Newmont is doing several of those things simultaneously.
Newmont is shrinking its share count, and that matters
Since its previous earnings call, Newmont said it had repurchased $1.7 billion of stock, with another $4.3 billion remaining under its existing $6 billion authorization.
More importantly, since February 2024, Newmont says it has reduced its share count by more than 100 million shares, or approximately 9%.
This is not merely a cosmetic financial-engineering statistic.
Imagine a company generates the same $10 billion of future cash flow but has 9% fewer shares among which that cash flow must be divided. All else equal, each remaining share represents a larger claim on the business.
The same principle applies to earnings per share and potentially dividends per share.
Newmont explicitly connects its buyback program with the possibility of growing dividends per share over time while maintaining a disciplined overall capital-return framework.
There is an important caveat: buybacks create the most value when management repurchases shares at sensible prices. Reducing the share count is not automatically accretive if a company massively overpays for its own stock.
Still, a falling share count backed by genuine free cash flow is generally more meaningful than buybacks financed by increasing debt.
Newmont ended Q2 with $9 billion of cash, $13 billion of liquidity and a $3.4 billion net cash position.
But Newmont’s costs provide an important warning
This is where the fundamental picture becomes more nuanced.
Newmont’s gold by-product all-in sustaining cost, or AISC, increased 58% from Q1 to $1,621 per ounce.
The increase reflected higher sustaining capital and additional costs related partly to the Cadia downtime following seismic events. Gold CAS per ounce also rose sharply.
What is AISC? All-in sustaining cost is a commonly used mining metric designed to capture not only the direct cost of producing gold but also much of the ongoing capital required to keep the operation producing.
This is why investors should not look only at gold prices.
A gold miner benefits when gold rises, but the size of that benefit depends on what happens to wages, diesel, equipment, royalties, grades, sustaining capital and production volumes at the same time.
Still, context matters.
Despite Q2 AISC of $1,621, Newmont’s year-to-date by-product AISC was $1,321, while its full-year guidance remains approximately $1,680 per ounce.
So the Q2 cost spike is a genuine issue to monitor, but it does not currently amount to a guidance failure.
Cadia may be the most important operational detail
Cadia was hit by seismic events during the quarter.
Newmont’s attributable Cadia gold production dropped sharply, and total copper production fell 43% from the previous quarter, with Cadia a major contributor to that decline.
Yet operations returned to normal levels by mid-June. More broadly, Newmont said first-half gold production was actually slightly above its expectations, and the company maintained its full-year production target of approximately 5.26 million attributable ounces.
That combination is constructive.
The company suffered a material operational disruption, recovered the asset and still did not need to reduce its annual production outlook.
For an investor, that can matter more than whether one individual quarterly production number looked weak.
One number shows why gold matters so much to NEM
Newmont provides investors with an unusually useful sensitivity table.
Under its 2026 assumptions, a $100-per-ounce change in gold corresponds to approximately a $505 million pre-tax revenue and cost impact.
By comparison, a $10-per-barrel move in Brent crude produces an estimated impact of about $60 million.
Those numbers help explain something important about gold mining stocks.
NEM is not gold, but it has operating leverage to gold.
When gold rises, the additional price received can flow through a relatively fixed operating infrastructure. This can allow profits and free cash flow to grow faster than the percentage move in gold itself.
But leverage works both ways.
If gold falls materially while mining costs remain elevated, profitability can contract much faster than the gold price decline alone would suggest.
This is why investors sometimes see gold fall 3% while a miner falls 8% or 10%.
The equity contains additional layers of operating, financial and execution risk.
The $4,414 realized gold price helps explain the cash generation
Newmont realized an average gold price of $4,414 per ounce during Q2.
That was actually $486 below Q1’s $4,900 realized price, yet dramatically above the $3,320 realized one year earlier.
Compare that $4,414 realized price with Q2 by-product AISC of $1,621.
The rough difference is close to $2,800 per ounce.
That is not an accounting profit margin, and investors should not treat it as one. Taxes, corporate expenses, project spending, financing, reclamation and many other items still matter.
But it illustrates why Newmont can generate huge amounts of cash when gold remains at historically elevated prices.
Why the Strait of Hormuz matters to Newmont in more than one way
This brings us back to the macro environment.
Recent progress involving Iran, Oman and commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz could reduce part of the geopolitical premium embedded in oil and gold. See investingLive’s report: US official says there is progress on Iran, Oman and the Strait of Hormuz.
At first glance, de-escalation sounds bearish for gold because it can reduce safe-haven demand.
For Newmont, however, there is another side to the equation.
Oil is an important mining input.
Newmont itself estimates that a $10 move in Brent can produce roughly a $60 million revenue-and-cost impact, and management specifically warned that higher oil prices could pressure third-quarter unit costs.
So Middle East de-escalation can potentially create two opposing forces:
- Lower geopolitical fear could weigh on gold.
- Lower oil prices could reduce part of Newmont’s cost pressure.
That is a much more useful way for NEM investors to think about the Hormuz story than simply assuming “Middle East tensions up equals gold miners up.”
US CPI may matter to NEM almost as much as company news
The next important link in the chain is inflation.
Gold remains highly sensitive to US interest-rate expectations and real yields. A softer inflation environment can make future rate cuts more plausible, while hotter inflation can push yields and the dollar higher and create pressure on gold.
That is why the investingLive analysis Gold stays supported amid Middle East de-escalation, but the US CPI could erase the gains is relevant not just to gold traders, but to NEM shareholders as well.
A gold miner sits several steps down the transmission chain:
CPI → interest-rate expectations → yields and dollar → gold → miner margins → NEM earnings and cash flow.
Understanding that chain can help investors distinguish between short-lived moves in the stock and changes that genuinely affect the underlying earnings outlook.
China’s gold accumulation supports the longer-term thesis
There is also a slower-moving force beneath the market.
China’s official gold reserves continued to rise in July, extending the reported buying streak to a 21st consecutive month, as discussed in investingLive’s China gold buying spree continues in July.
Central-bank buying does not tell us whether gold rises tomorrow.
But persistent sovereign demand matters because it can help support the longer-term gold regime in which companies such as Newmont operate.
For NEM investors, that structural backdrop is more important than trying to predict the next $20 move in bullion.
There is one more reason not to chase the NEM rally
Newmont’s own guidance suggests the next quarter may not look as clean as investors might expect from the current stock momentum.
The company expects Q3 production to remain broadly similar to Q2. At the same time, unit costs are expected to rise as sustaining capital spending increases.
The second half is expected to contain 58% of 2026 sustaining capital spending and 63% of development capital spending, while production is expected to be weighted only modestly toward H2 at 51%.
That creates an interesting setup:
The longer-term fundamental story can remain bullish even while near-term quarterly cost comparisons become less attractive.
This is exactly why a stock can have an attractive long-term target but still experience sharp pullbacks on the way there.
It reinforces the same message coming from the weekly chart: patience.
What would weaken the bullish NEM stock thesis?
A pullback toward $105-$107 would not necessarily destroy the setup after such a large weekly advance.
That area could simply become the first test of whether buyers remain willing to defend higher prices.
A deeper move toward $98-$100 would make the chart less comfortable.
The most important deterioration would be a return toward and eventually through the recent $91-$94 reversal area.
If NEM falls through the lower portion of this channel instead of eventually breaking the upper boundary, the bull-flag interpretation would need to be reconsidered.
Fundamentally, I would also watch for three developments:
- A material deterioration in gold prices.
- Further cost inflation that threatens the full-year AISC outlook.
- Operational problems that force Newmont to reduce its approximately 5.26 million-ounce production guidance.
None of those is currently the base case communicated by management.
Could Newmont stock make a new all-time high?
Yes, I think that scenario deserves serious attention, but the chart still needs confirmation.
The fundamental picture is arguably stronger than the price chart alone reveals.
Newmont beat profit expectations in Q2 despite lower production, generated another $2.2 billion of free cash flow, maintained full-year production guidance after the Cadia disruption, carries net cash and continues shrinking its share count aggressively.
At the same time, higher costs and heavier second-half capital spending give investors good reasons not to treat the thesis as automatic.
Technically, the bulls have already accomplished something important by buying aggressively at the bottom of the weekly channel.
Now they need to finish the job.
A sustained breakout through approximately $118-$120 would make $124-$126 the next area of interest and would bring the $131-$135 all-time-high zone much more clearly into play.
And if NEM eventually clears that region with convincing weekly acceptance, we would no longer be discussing a recovery toward the old high.
We would be discussing price discovery.
For now, though, I think the right word remains patience.
The lower boundary has done its job.
Now let’s see whether the upper boundary finally gives way. Remember, always do your own research and invest at your own risk only. Have a good week.
This article was written by Itai Levitan at investinglive.com.