Top 5 ASX Copper Stocks of 2024

Year-to-date gain: 78.57 percent; market cap: AU$240.64 million; current share price: AU$0.625

Bougainville Copper is working to reopen the past-producing Panguna copper complex, which ceased operations in 1989. Panguna is considered one of the largest copper deposits in the world, and according to the company, its successful restart is viewed as a critical component of future economic independence for Bougainville, which is an autonomous region in Papua New Guinea. The country’s government holds a 36.5 percent share in the company.

In early February, after much deliberation, Bougainville Copper was granted a five year extension to its Panguna mining licence, which will open the door for advanced-stage prefeasibility and feasibility exploration activities.

The news sent shares of the company spiking to their best year-to-date close of 2024: AU$0.80 on February 2. That’s more than double Bougainville Copper’s close of AU$0.35 the previous day.

Year-to-date gain: 24.14 percent; market cap: AU$4.09 billion; current share price: AU$9

Sandfire Resources has an extensive portfolio of copper mines across the globe, including the MATSA mining complex in Spain, the DeGrussa copper-gold mine in Western Australia and the Motheo copper mine in Botswana. The company also has multiple development- and exploration-stage projects.

As a producer of the red metal, Sandfire’s share price has benefited from improving copper prices. It started out the year at AU$7.37 and rose throughout much of the quarter to reach a year-to-date high of AU$9.15 on April 4.

DeGrussa was placed on care and maintenance in mid-2023. However, output at MATSA, which the company acquired in February 2022 for US$1.87 billion, and from the newly commissioned Motheo copper mine, are taking the operation’s place as major sources of copper production for Sandfire.

Comprised of three underground mines, MATSA operated at a record rate of 4.6 million tonnes per annum in the first half of Sandfire’s 2024 fiscal year, which ended on December 31, 2023. Production came to 28,600 tonnes of copper and 42,600 tonnes of zinc for the period. Meanwhile, Motheo’s production during the same period exceeded its nameplate capacity for output of 16,800 tonnes of copper and 396,000 ounces of silver.

Year-to-date gain: 22.03 percent; market cap: AU$125.27 million; current share price: AU$0.072

Xanadu Mines is a copper and gold exploration company with several advanced exploration projects in Mongolia. The company’s flagship project is the Kharmagtai copper-gold project, and it’s also exploring its Red Mountain porphyry copper-gold project, both of which are in the country’s South Gobi region.

In the last quarter of 2023, the company released an upgraded resource estimate for Kharmagtai as part of its work toward completing a prefeasibility study for the project. The new resource estimate stands at 1.3 billion tonnes containing 3.4 million tonnes of copper and 8.5 million ounces of gold, which represents a 15 percent increase in contained copper and a 9 percent increase in contained gold. Xanadu is on track to complete a prefeasibility study and a maiden ore reserve estimate for Kharmagtai by Q3 of this calendar year. On March 25, the company began a 5,000 metre drill program to test five target areas at Red Mountain; it expects to release assay results from that work in June.

Xanadu’s share price climbed significantly throughout March, and reached a year-to-date high of AU$0.76 on April 9.

Year-to-date gain: 16.67 percent; market cap: AU$110.1 million; current share price: AU$0.21

Caravel Minerals is developing its namesake Caravel copper porphyry project in Western Australia, which it claims is “Australia’s largest undeveloped copper deposit and the fourth-largest copper discovery worldwide in the last decade.”

Caravel recently updated the mineral resource estimate for the project to 3.03 million tonnes of contained copper and an ore reserve of 1.4 million tonnes. The company is working toward completing a feasibility study by the end of this year. In its quarterly report for the period ended December 31, 2023, management states that the “project development timeline remains favourably in line with the forecast copper market supply deficit from 2026-2027.”

Higher copper prices at the start of Q2 boosted Caravel’s share price to a year-to-date high of AU$0.21 on April 9.

Year-to-date gain: 6.67 percent; market cap: AU$173.43 million; current share price: AU$0.40

AIC Mines owns the high-grade Eloise copper mine in North Queensland, as well as a portfolio of exploration-stage copper-gold projects in Australia. Eloise started production in 1996, and the company is looking to expand the life of the operation through the development of the nearby Jericho deposit.

In Q3 2023, AIC Mines reported record production of 3,402 tonnes of copper and 1,820 ounces of gold in concentrate, which it followed with record production of 3,759 tonnes of copper and 1,890 ounces of gold in concentrate for Q4.

Positive newsflow and improving copper prices lifted AIC Mines’ share price by 6.67 percent from the start of the year to AU$0.40 on April 9. In late March, the company posted a new ore reserve estimate for Jericho, followed shortly by an announcement that drilling has begun at the recently discovered Swagman prospect, located between Eloise and Jericho.