Barrick MiningThin moat

Barrick digs metal out of the ground and sells it at whatever price the world happens to be paying that morning. There is no product decision, no pricing decision, no customer relationship — gold is gold, and an ounce from Nevada fetches exactly what an ounce from anywhere else fetches. That single fact governs everything about the company, and it is why this page exists in an app about moats: Barrick is the control group, the business that shows what the absence of pricing power looks like.

The money map is a two-metal split. Of 2025's $16.96 billion in revenue¹, roughly $15.5 billion came from gold and about $1.5 billion from copper — the copper share rising enough that in 2025 the company dropped 'Gold' from a name it had carried since 1983 and became Barrick Mining. Production comes from a portfolio built around what the industry calls Tier One assets: Nevada Gold Mines, the joint venture with Newmont that is the largest gold complex on earth, plus Pueblo Viejo in the Dominican Republic, Kibali in the Congo, Loulo-Gounkoto in Mali and Lumwana in Zambia.

Because the price is given, the only variables management controls are volume, cost and jurisdiction — and the earnings chart shows what happens when those go wrong. Barrick lost money in 2012, 2013, 2014 and again in 2018, including a $10.4 billion loss in 2013 as writedowns landed on assets bought at the top of the last cycle. The current picture is the opposite: gold's rally has driven trailing revenue to about $19.1 billion and net income to roughly $6.1 billion, with second-quarter 2026 revenue up 44% year over year². None of that improvement was earned by being cleverer. It was earned by the gold price.

The market understands this perfectly, which is why the shares trade near 12 times earnings — a fraction of what a branded consumer business commands — and why that multiple compresses when metal prices peak and expands when they collapse. A low multiple on cyclical peak earnings is not a bargain; it is the market declining to capitalize a windfall.

What follows examines both halves honestly. The Moat asks what a price-taker can actually own — irreplaceable ore bodies, a position on the cost curve, reserves that outlast the cycle, scale — and rates it thin, because none of that is pricing power. The Future Bets follow where the company is putting its windfall: the Fourmile discovery and the Newmont settlement, a North American listing, and two copper mines in Zambia and Pakistan. Its two metals are taken in turn in The Revenue Lines.