Twenty-two brokerages currently cover Freeport-McMoRan, assigning a consensus rating of Buy. Of these, three recommend Hold, sixteen recommend Buy and three recommend Strong Buy. The average one-year price objective among analysts is $58.40. UBS Group recently raised its target from $60.00 to $70.00, Morgan Stanley set a $70.00 target, and CICC Research lifted its target from $50.40 to $64.40. Clarkson Capital upgraded the stock from Neutral to Buy with a $46.00 objective, while Sanford C. Bernstein downgraded from Outperform to Market Perform but increased its target to $54.00.

Chief Accounting Officer Stephen T. Higgins sold 28,423 shares at an average price of $47.99 on December 11, reducing his position by 21.26% to 105,294 shares. On the same date, CAO Ellie L. Mikes sold 9,572 shares at $47.66, a 19.80% reduction, leaving her with 38,761 shares. Corporate insiders now own 0.79% of the company. Recent institutional activity includes new positions by Steigerwald Gordon & Koch ($25,000), Twin Peaks Wealth Advisors ($28,000), Salomon & Ludwin (1,962.9% increase to 722 shares), JPL Wealth Management ($33,000) and Pilgrim Partners Asia ($36,000). Institutions and hedge funds hold 80.77% of the equity.

On January 22, Freeport-McMoRan reported fourth-quarter EPS of $0.47, beating the consensus of $0.28 by $0.19. Revenue totaled $5.63 billion versus estimates of $5.42 billion, though down 1.5% year-over-year. Net margin and return on equity both stood at 8.5%. Analysts project full-year EPS of 1.68. The board declared a quarterly dividend of $0.075 per share, an annualized $0.30 payout representing a yield of 0.5% and a payout ratio of 19.87%, with payment on February 2 to holders of record January 15.