London, April 24, 2026, 16:08 BST
Glencore plc shares fell in London on Friday, with the miner and trader’s website showing the stock at 555.10 pence at 14:40 GMT, down 7.40 pence, as investors looked ahead to next week’s first-quarter production report. The company has scheduled that report, which details mined volumes, for April 30.
The update matters because Glencore has put copper at the centre of its growth pitch. The company told investors in December it had a path for base copper output to exceed 1 million tonnes by the end of 2028 and a target of about 1.6 million tonnes by 2035.
The market backdrop is doing its part, for now. Benchmark three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange, the main venue for base-metal trading, hit $13,448.50 a metric ton on Wednesday, its highest since Feb. 27, after a U.S.-Iran ceasefire extension lifted risk appetite.
But the metal’s strength is not a clean tailwind. Goldman Sachs kept its 2026 copper price forecast at $12,650 a tonne and a 490,000-ton surplus, while warning that sulphuric acid shortages tied to Strait of Hormuz disruption and China’s export ban could tighten supply; sulphuric acid is used in solvent extraction and electrowinning, a copper-processing route.
Glencore’s own recent message has been all about recovery. Chief Executive Gary Nagle said in February the group had “clear momentum for our copper-led growth strategy,” while Reuters reported that adjusted EBITDA — earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation — fell 6% to $13.51 billion in 2025 and the company planned a $2 billion shareholder return. Glencore
The April 30 release will be checked against a weak comparison. In last year’s first quarter, Glencore reported own-sourced copper production of 167,900 tonnes, down 30% from a year earlier, while Nagle said the quarter was expected to be the low point for 2025.
There is also a Congo angle. In its full-year 2025 production report, Glencore said the Democratic Republic of Congo’s cobalt quota system meant copper production in the DRC would be prioritised over cobalt where it made commercial sense.
Peers are raising the bar. Teck Resources said on Thursday it beat first-quarter profit estimates on record copper sales and higher prices, while BHP said on Wednesday its annual copper output should come in at the upper half of its forecast range. Both updates underline why Glencore’s volumes will matter as much as price.
Rio Tinto remains part of the backdrop, not the trade. Rio walked away from talks to buy Glencore in February, killing a deal that would have created the world’s largest mining company, and Jefferies analyst Christopher LaFemina said then there were “various ways” for Glencore to unlock value, though a premium all-share deal would have been the simplest route. Reuters
Investors will look first at copper grades and recoveries at mines in the DRC, Peru and Chile, then at coal and marketing commentary. Glencore says it extracts and processes copper ore in South America, the DRC and Australia, and markets copper metal and concentrates through its trading arm.
The question is blunt: whether Glencore can turn a hot copper market into more tonnes, not only a better price. That is where next week’s report will bite.
