Welcome back, GoldBuzzers!

It's Thursday, gold's near $5K, silver ripped 5% yesterday, and we've got the full breakdown on Q4 mining earnings - where companies like Barrick and Pan American are posting numbers that would make a tech CFO jealous.

Ok, let’s dive on in. 👇

Gold continued flirting with the $5,000 mark on Wednesday, after the Fed dropped its January FOMC minutes and reminded everyone why precious metals remain the ultimate "we have no idea what's happening" trade.

The minutes revealed a Fed as divided as your group chat picking a restaurant - some members want cuts if disinflation behaves, others are ready to hike again if inflation gets spicy. With rates parked at 3.5%-3.75% and the Fed refusing to commit to anything beyond “we’ll see what the data says”, gold's doing what it does best: thriving on ambiguity.

Meanwhile, silver finally had a day, rocketing almost 5% to over $77 after getting hammered in recent weeks - the gold/silver ratio tightening to 64:1 suggests the white metal might finally be catching a bid after its February beatdown. Between central bank buying that won't quit (China's now on month 15, India just hit record holdings) and a Fed that can't quite commit to anything, the precious metals trade remains: uncertainty is the strategy.

It’s that exciting time of the year when we’re starting to get our hands on 2025’s Q4 results, and Gold miners just posted one of the best earnings seasons this industry has ever seen. The cash machine is on, and nobody's turning it off.

With gold hovering under $5,000 and silver bouncing around the mid-$70s after that wild January spike (and equally wild crash), Q4 earnings confirmed what we've been saying: this industry is swimming in cash. Let’s take look at these latest numbers in more detail.

The Gold Giants Are Literally Printing Money

Start with Barrick - the industry's biggest player. Full-year 2025 revenue hit $16.96 billion (up 31% from 2024), with operating cash flow of $7.69 billion and free cash flow of $3.87 billion - up 194% year-over-year. Read that again. Q4 alone delivered $6 billion in revenue, $2.73 billion in operating cash flow, and $1.62 billion in FCF. In one quarter.

The result? Barrick repurchased $1.5 billion in shares, hiked its dividend 140% to $0.42/share, and ended the year sitting on $6.71 billion in cash. If I have one quibble, it’s that I’d have liked to see them pay off some of their remaining debt.

However, they doubled the gold resource at their Fourmile project in Nevada and are now preparing an IPO of their North American gold assets. The 2026 playbook is expansion, not survival.

IAMGOLD had a monster quarter too. Q4 revenue hit $1.09 billion - more than double the year-ago quarter - with attributable production of 242,400 ounces. Full-year mine-site free cash flow reached a record $1.2 billion, net debt was cut by $515 million, and the company has already spent $100 million on buybacks since December. Côté Gold is now hitting nameplate throughput of 36,000 tonnes per day ahead of schedule, and 2026 guidance of 720,000-820,000 ounces looks very achievable.

And they're not alone. Equinox Gold delivered a record 922,827 ounces in 2025 and is guiding 700,000-800,000 ounces for 2026 at an AISC of $1,425-$1,525 per ounce - implying margins north of $3,000 at today's prices. Smaller players like Artemis Gold are forecasting 265,000-290,000 ounces in 2026 at an AISC of just $925-$1,025, with growth capex funded entirely from cash flow, and Agnico Eagle is yet another miner whose profits are stellar.

Silver Miners: Don't Sleep on These Numbers

Now let's talk silver - where industrial demand from solar panels, EVs, and tech keeps adding fuel to an already tight supply picture.

Pan American Silver beat Q4 guidance with 7.3 million ounces and full-year silver production of 22.8 million ounces. Their cash pile grew to $1.32 billion, up $408 million in a single quarter. For 2026, expect 25-27 million ounces of silver alongside 700-750,000 ounces of gold. That's 10-18% silver production growth in one year.

Hecla Mining posted 17 million ounces of silver in 2025, hitting the top of guidance, with Q4 AISC under $3/oz after byproduct credits at Greens Creek. First Majestic ramped to 31.1 million silver-equivalent ounces, beating revised guidance, and doubled its dividend to 2% of net revenue - tying payouts directly to metal prices.

Why This Matters for the rest of 2026

The common thread across all of these reports? Free cash flow is running at 3-5x what these companies generated just two years ago. Balance sheets are the cleanest they've been in a generation. And instead of chasing risky acquisitions (the old playbook that burned investors in 2011), most producers are returning cash to shareholders through dividends and buybacks while funding growth organically.

Think about it this way. When your AISC is $1,400-$1,800 and gold is trading near $5,000, every ounce you pull out of the ground delivers $3,000+ in margin. That kind of profitability doesn't just improve balance sheets - it changes how Wall Street values the entire sector.

But what still blows my mind is that despite these record earnings, most gold miners are trading at valuations that assume gold is somewhere around $2,000. The gap between what these companies are actually earning and what the market is pricing in won’t last forever.

The opportunity window is wide open. GoldBuzz Insider launches soon, and we'll be giving you the tools to capitalize.

For silver miners specifically, the historical pattern of 3-5x leverage to metal prices hasn't fully played out yet. As analyst upgrades keep rolling in, that could change quickly.

We're not at the end of this story. We're barely getting started.

That’s all for this Thursday, folks. See you on Sunday.

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Rick Adams
Founder, GoldBuzz
rick@goldbuzz.com