The Metal Industry Had Impressive Performance in The First Half Of The Year, And Its Prospects For The Second Half Are Also Optimistic.

In the first half of 2025, the non-ferrous metals industry witnessed a favorable development trend, with commodity prices generally rising, driving a significant increase in industry profits. As of August 29th evening, among the listed companies in the non-ferrous metals sector that had disclosed their 2025 semi-annual reports, over 60% of the enterprises reported year-on-year growth in performance, and 90% achieved profit for the parent company. Companies with half-year profits exceeding 1 billion yuan reached 21.
As the "profit king" of the industry, Zijin Mining had a revenue of 167.711 billion yuan in the first half of 2025, an increase of 11.5% year-on-year, and a parent company's net profit of 23.292 billion yuan, an increase of 54.41% year-on-year. Its copper production was 570,000 tons, an increase of over 9%, and gold production increased by 16% to 41 tons. Luoyang Molybdenum's net profit in the first half also increased by 60.07% year-on-year, with copper production increasing by 12.68%, and its copper and cobalt mining area in the Democratic Republic of the Congo continued to release capacity, with annual copper production exceeding 650,000 tons.
The rise in gold prices is one of the important factors for the growth of enterprises' profits. In the first half of 2025, the international spot gold price reached a peak of 3,500 US dollars per ounce, closing at 3,302 US dollars per ounce, an increase of approximately 25.8% compared to the year-end closing price. Shandong Gold achieved a parent company's net profit of 2.808 billion yuan in the first half, doubling year-on-year.
In addition to gold, the rare earth market also performed well. Northern Rare Earth achieved a parent company's net profit of 931 million yuan in the first half of 2025, an increase of 1,951.52% year-on-year. With the rapid development of emerging industries such as new energy vehicles and offshore wind power, rare earth demand is strong, and the market price has risen steadily. However, the metal industry also faces some challenges. For example, on August 1st, the United States imposed a 50% tariff on semi-finished copper and copper-intensive derivative products, which directly impacted domestic copper processing enterprises in the United States and also led to increased volatility in the global copper market. However, in the long term, the tight copper mining resource situation has not changed, and copper prices are still supported by the supply side.
Regarding the trend in the second half of the year, the industry still holds a positive outlook on the trends of gold and copper prices. Zijin Mining believes that the resilience of China's new energy transformation and infrastructure investment demand will continue to support copper prices, coupled with the long-term structural supply gap of refined copper, the fundamental support for copper prices remains stable. And the global trade uncertainty, geopolitical tensions, and the weak dollar trend will strengthen the market's demand for gold allocation, with the central bank's gold purchase demand remaining high. The expectation of a rate cut by the Federal Reserve in the second half of the year has risen, and the attractiveness of gold assets will further increase.