NEMQueued from the May 25, 2026 S&P 500 market-cap snapshot ranks 76-100; refreshed with sources accessed on 2026-05-27.

Newmont

Newmont is a global gold producer with copper, silver, zinc, and lead exposure across large-scale mining operations.

Metadata

Where this company sits

Ticker
NEM
Rank snapshot
≈ 88
Sector
Materials
Industry
Gold Mining
Region
United States
Index
S&P 500 · Top 100 by market cap

Metrics

Scoring view

Every metric is paired with a short rationale. The numbers are deliberate, not divine.

Moat

8.0/10

Large reserve base, operating footprint, permitting experience, capital intensity, and processing infrastructure create high barriers to entry, though commodity exposure and political risk keep the moat from being absolute.

Decentralizability

3.0/10

Large-scale mining itself is difficult to decentralize, but recycling, responsible artisanal production, open LCA models, and local materials-processing tooling create partial pressure around the edges.

Profitability

8.0/10

StockAnalysis reported 2025 revenue of $22.67 billion and earnings of $7.09 billion, while Newmont's 2025 results described strong cash flow and realized gold prices, indicating high recent profitability.

Price / Earnings

14.5x

StockAnalysis listed Newmont's trailing P/E ratio at 14.51 during the May 27, 2026 market session.

Market cap

$119.1B

CompaniesMarketCap reported Newmont's May 2026 market capitalization at $119.14 billion; StockAnalysis showed a similar market cap above $115 billion intraday on May 27, 2026.

Freed-up capital potential

$11.3B

Derived from market cap, moat resistance, decentralizability, and profitability. It is a directional estimate of value capture that could come under pressure if open alternatives compound.

Narrative

Why the company matters

A short editorial overview plus the current thesis on moat strength and decentralization pressure.

Business profile

Newmont operates as a gold producer and also explores for or produces copper, silver, lead, zinc, and other metals across a geographically diversified portfolio.

Its public reporting emphasizes gold as the anchor commodity, with co-product metals adding exposure to electrification and industrial demand cycles.

Scale and economics

As of May 2026, market data providers placed Newmont's market capitalization above $100 billion, making it one of the largest public mining companies in the world.

Recent results show strong profitability in a high gold-price environment, but earnings remain tied to commodity prices, grades, tax regimes, permitting, labor, energy, and capital intensity.

Moat reading

Newmont's moat comes from scarce mineral rights, reserve scale, mining expertise, permitting history, capital access, processing infrastructure, and a portfolio of long-lived assets. Those advantages are difficult to reproduce quickly because new mines require years of exploration, environmental review, engineering, community negotiation, financing, and construction.

The moat is not software-like. It is exposed to commodity cycles, ore-grade decline, political risk, operating disruptions, and substitution through recycled metals or smaller certified supply chains. Scale protects Newmont, but it also makes the business dependent on large physical sites and regulatory legitimacy.

Decentralization reading

Primary gold and copper mining is structurally hard to decentralize because high-grade ore bodies are location-specific, capital requirements are large, environmental risks are material, and processing often depends on specialized plants. Decentralization pressure is therefore more plausible at the edges: sourcing transparency, recycled metal recovery, artisanal cooperative supply, open environmental modeling, and local materials-processing tooling.

The strongest open or decentralized substitutes do not replace Newmont mine-for-mine today. They can reduce marginal demand for newly mined metal, improve buyer confidence in small-scale responsible sources, and make recycling or traceability more competitive where buyers value provenance.

Products

Where the moat actually touches users

These pages zoom into the products and services that matter most to each company, the alternatives already nibbling at them, and 2 structured disruption concepts across the current product set.

2 disruption concepts tracked0 documented exceptions
Gold mining operations

Precious metals mining

1 concept

Newmont's core business is large-scale gold mining, with associated silver, lead, zinc, and copper production from a global asset base.

Open analysis
Copper mining operations

Base metals mining

1 concept

Newmont produces copper as part of its broader mining portfolio, including copper exposure from large multi-metal mining assets.

Open analysis

Technology waves

Strategic lenses

These are the repo's explicit bias terms: the technologies expected to keep making incumbents less inevitable over time.

Microfactories and automated mini-home production

Small, software-defined manufacturing cells could make localized production less eccentric and more default.

  • Products with heavy branding but generic bill-of-materials profiles look increasingly vulnerable.
  • Logistics moats still matter, but their margin for arrogance should narrow.
  • Open-source production recipes can pressure both price and product differentiation.

Paper trail

Visible evidence trail

These sources shaped the scoring and writing. The site is opinionated, but it should not behave like it is improvising facts in a dark room.

Free The World

Built as a research surface for tracking how AI, open source, Bitcoin rails, and distributed manufacturing steadily make legacy pricing models look like an elaborate historical accident.

Early-2026 public-source snapshot

Open source on GitHub

Commit 2970904 ·