JPMorgan on Monday reiterated an Overweight recommendation on Antofagasta (ANTO:LN) (OTC:ANFGF) and held a GBP44.00 price target. The bank earlier upgraded Antofagasta to Overweight in February 2025 and continues to highlight the miner’s growth trajectory within the sector.
In its note, JPMorgan said investor conversations around organic growth are being reframed by higher capital costs and execution challenges reported by other copper producers. The broker pointed to recent announcements from peers that have underlined this shift.
Most notably, Lundin Mining disclosed on Monday that its Vicuña greenfield project - a 50/50 joint venture with BHP - will require more capital expenditure than had been anticipated. Separately, BHP has outlined plans for copper volume expansion of more than 40% by fiscal year 2035, while noting that this growth will also entail significant capital spending.
Against that backdrop, JPMorgan highlighted Antofagasta’s projected copper expansion of roughly 30% to 2028/29 versus 2024 levels, a pace the bank says is the second highest among global copper peers. The firm added that management is advancing several brownfield opportunities with lower capital intensity to help replenish the project pipeline beyond 2029.
Following Antofagasta’s fiscal year 2025 results, JPMorgan made modest adjustments to its earnings forecasts, increasing group EBITDA estimates for 2026 and 2027 by 2% and 1% respectively. The company remains on JPMorgan’s EMEA Analyst Focus List.
The company’s analyst coverage has been active beyond JPMorgan. UBS moved its rating from Buy to Neutral while raising its price target to GBP42.00, saying the change reflects the stock’s marked outperformance over the past year. Antofagasta’s shares have delivered roughly a 135% total shareholder return, according to the note, outperforming both the copper price and the COPX index.
Deutsche Bank also revised its stance amid the rally in metal prices, cutting its recommendation on Antofagasta from Hold to Sell even as it lifted the target to 2800p. Overall, copper-related equities, including Antofagasta, have benefitted from record-high global copper prices, a development the market has linked to a weak dollar and ongoing geopolitical tensions that have supported demand for producers.
Market context: Brokers are recalibrating views and targets as both commodity prices and project-level capital requirements evolve. Antofagasta’s mix of near-term growth and management efforts to pursue lower-capex brownfield projects are central to JPMorgan’s continued Overweight stance.