Morning Briefing: Copper's Squeeze Continues to Tighten

0:02Good morning and welcome back to the Mining Stock Daily Morning Briefing presented by the Clear Commodity Network, and delivering today's top news in mining and mineral exploration. From the new ClearCom Studios, here's your host, Trevor Hall. Good morning, everybody. Welcome back to this morning's Mining Stock Daily Morning Briefing. Hump day here, and CPI day, Wednesday, August 12th. It is a strong morning for precious metals. Gold is up 1 % at time of recording to$4 ,413 an ounce. Silver is up 2.5 % to$66.31. Platinum, it's the outperformer this morning, up 2.7 % to$1 ,802. Copper is modestly higher, up about three quarters to$6.64 a pound.

0:55As I said, all eyes this morning are on the July CPI inflation report, which is expected to be the most significant macro data point of the week for markets and for the Fed. Economists are forecasting a 0.2 % increase in the headline consumer prices, which would nudge the annual rate down to 3.4%, while core inflation is estimated at 0.1 % monthly and 2.5 % annually. Both prints that would be consistent with continued progress towards the Fed's 2 % target and could all but lock in a September rate cut. A surprise to the upside would complicate that picture significantly. Copper is back near record territory as an outage at the Gresik smelter in Indonesia began.

1:44That is the plant that processes ore from the giant Grasberg mine. The outage compounds an already severe supply squeeze. Operators Mitsubishi Materials and PT Freeport, Indonesia shut the facility after a boiler leak on August 8th and have not set a restart date. London Benchmark Copper has held above$14 ,000 a ton for an unprecedented run of sessions. COMEX contracts for 2007 delivery are already trading above$7 a pound. We'll get to the news out of the miners and explorers here in just a moment, but first a quick mention of today's sponsor. Today's morning briefing is brought to you by Equinox Gold.

2:29In late July, Equinox closed its merger with Orla Mining, creating a new North American senior gold producer with a clear path to nearly 2 million ounces of annual production from an internally funded growth pipeline. Equinox Gold trades on the TSX and the NYSE American, both with the symbol EQX.

3:13we bring you the insights that matter most to energy investors and industry watchers. You can find Going Nuclear on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and at clearcommodity.net. Clear Commodity Network, digital news on the physical markets.

3:33And here's what you need to know this morning. Integra Resources was out with their second quarter 2026 results from the Florida Canyon mined in Nevada, reporting gold production of 16 ,379 ounces. That's a 30 % increase quarter over quarter, driven by record total tons mined of 87 ,867 tons per day at a strip ratio of 0.81. Revenue came in at$70.8 million and the company sold about 15 ,794 ounces at an average realized price of$4 ,426 per ounce. Integra also noted that the Delamar project in Idaho entered the federal NEPA permitting process in May with state of good repair programs including test mining now underway on the site to shorten the development timeline.

4:30Integra resources trades on the TSX Venture Exchange with ITR and on the NYSE American with ITRG. Elemental Royalty is reporting record quarterly gold equivalent ounces sold and record operating cash flow for Q2 with 5 ,248 gold equivalent ounces sold. That was up 65 % from Q2 of last year and this generated revenue of$23.8 million. That's the company's second highest quarterly result and a 127 % increase year over year, along with record operating cash flow of$15.5 million. Key contributors included Bonicro, Casarones, Calawinda, Timac, and Leval. And the company remains on track to deliver 17 ,000 to 21 ,000 gold equivalent ounces for the year after banking just over$10 ,000 through the first half.

5:31Elemental royalty trades on the NASDAQ and the TSX, both under the symbol ELE. Relevant Gold has commenced its largest-ever drill program, a fully funded and permitted 5 ,000-meter campaign, at the Burr Target Zone within the Lewiston Project in West Central Wyoming's South Pass Gold Camp. This year's program is designed to test the gold bearing structural system well beyond the 300 meter corridor drilled in 2024 when six holes totaling just over a thousand meters intersected shear hosted gold mineralization in every hole with select holes this year targeted to approximately 400 meters depth and an expanded permit application submitted covering an additional 2.5 kilometers of strike along the Burr and parallel sweetwater trends.

6:222025 surface sampling in the area also returned over-limit results of up to 506 grams per ton silver and 5.38 % copper. Relevant gold trades on the Venture Exchange with RGC and on the OTCQB with RGCCF. And Riley Gold is reporting that partner Kinross Gold has commenced their 2026 drill campaign at the PwC Pipeline West Clipper Gold Project in Nevada's Cortez District. The campaign targets areas south along the highest grade gold and soil anomalies on the property and a major interpreted structure identified through the recent seismic work, geophysics, and geological mapping. It is all ground that has never been drill tested within the project's 27.2 square kilometer land package.

7:16Kinross has the right to earn up to a 75 % interest by spending a minimum of$20 million and holds a 9.9 % equity position in Riley Gold. PWC directly adjoins Nevada Gold Mines that operates the adjacent Cortez and Pipeline complexes. It's the top producers in the state that has historically delivered 4 to 5 million ounces of gold per year. Riley Gold trades on the TSX Venture Exchange as RLYG and on the OTC QB with RLYGF. All right, that's a wrap here this morning on the morning briefing. The Mining Stock Daily Morning Briefing is produced by Clear Commodity Network. It is distributed throughout the world through your podcast, network of choice, and over at clearcommodity.net.

8:05Have a wonderful day, everybody. Be well. The information presented should not be considered investment advice. Mining Stock Daily and its affiliates are not responsible for any loss arising from any investment decision in connection with the material presented herein. Please do your own research or speak with a licensed financial representative before making any investment decisions. Thank you.