One FTSE 100 mining giant, Glencore (LSE: GLEN), has seen its stock more than double in a year — yet it still trades on a red-hot price-to-earnings (P/E) of 261. On paper, that looks extreme. But the share price keeps climbing. So what is the market seeing that some investors might be missing?
Looking beyond the numbers
At first glance, the valuation looks difficult to justify. With profits collapsing to just $120m last year, the sky-high P/E ratio is hardly surprising.
But that headline figure tells only part of the story.
Mining stocks are rarely valued on what they earned last year alone. Investors tend to look forward — and increasingly, the market appears to believe Glencore may be entering a very different phase.
At its recent capital markets day, management outlined a more ambitious copper strategy, targeting annual production growth from around 850,000 tonnes today to 1.6m tonnes by 2035. If achieved, that would make it the world’s largest copper producer.
That matters because the miner has historically been cautious about bringing major new supply online, preferring sustained price strength over short-lived commodity spikes.
Copper prices have now risen more than 70% since early 2024. The question is why.
Why this time may be different
Copper shortages have been discussed for years. But what appears to be changing is the scale of the imbalance between future demand and known supply.
Demand is now being supported by several long-term trends at once. Electrification, grid expansion, data infrastructure, and industrial investment all require large amounts of copper. Yet bringing new supply online remains slow, capital intensive and increasingly difficult.
That creates a problem for the industry. Existing mines are ageing, new discoveries are harder to develop and large projects can take well over a decade to reach production. Even with announced developments, forecast supply still appears well short of expected demand over the coming decades.
This is why copper prices matter so much. If supply cannot respond quickly enough, sustained higher prices may be required to encourage new production and close the gap.
For companies with existing resources and expansion options already in place, that backdrop could prove increasingly valuable.
So if the copper story looks compelling, where could investors still get caught out?
What could go wrong?
The most immediate risk is timing. While the copper narrative is compelling, large-scale supply responses take years to deliver and depend on successful execution across multiple jurisdictions. Any delays in permitting, capital allocation, or project ramp-up could slow the path to higher production.
There is also the risk that commodity prices do not cooperate. Even in a structural deficit, volatility remains high and weaker-than-expected pricing could delay investment decisions or compress returns.
Finally, operational delivery matters. With growth spread across multiple regions, complexity increases — and with it, the potential for cost overruns or disruption at key assets.
Closing remarks
To me, the market is still underestimating how far copper dynamics could run if structural deficits persist. Glencore is increasingly positioned not just as a cyclical miner, but as a leveraged way to acccess that theme through scale and optionality. I have been adding to my own position recently, and I think it remains one for investors to consider for long-term exposure to the copper story.
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Andrew Mackie owns shares in Glencore.
