Chifeng Gold's net profit increased by 74.7% last year; it is still supported by fundamentals for an upward trend in gold prices.

On the evening of March 20, Chifeng Gold (600988) released its financial report. In 2025, the company’s net profit rose significantly and hit a historical high, supported by the fact that the global gold price reached historical highs 53 times that year. Entering 2026, fluctuations in the gold price have already become noticeably larger. Chifeng Gold believes that, from a fundamental perspective, gold prices still have upward support, but they may also, in phases, revert to the upper end of the range determined by fundamentals.

The financial report shows that, in 2025, all of Chifeng Gold’s key performance indicators saw major increases. The company achieved operating revenue of RMB 12.639 billion, up 40.03% year over year; and attributable net profit of RMB 3.082 billion, up 74.70% year over year. As of the end of the reporting period, the company’s asset-liability ratio was 33.91%, down 13.34 percentage points from the beginning of the year; and its interest-bearing debt balance was about RMB 878 million, down 67.45% from the beginning of the year.

Meanwhile, the company also completed a listing on the Main Board of the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong last year. It raised net proceeds of approximately HKD 3.1 billion. Chifeng Gold views this as “one of the most important strategic achievements in recent years,” and said it will use the capital markets as a catalyst to speed up the implementation of capacity expansion, technological upgrades, and exploration and resource-increase projects for mines in both China and overseas.

Chifeng Gold’s substantial improvement in operating performance is undoubtedly directly related to last year’s gold market bull run at a historical level. Driven by safe-haven demand and diversification in asset allocation, in 2025 the London spot gold price benchmark rose 62.90% from the beginning of the year; throughout the year, gold prices repeatedly set historical highs. Over the full year, it broke records 53 times, and global gold demand totaled USD 555 billion, up 45% year over year.

Among the constituents of the Shenwan Gold Index, according to Wind statistics, among the listed companies that have released their 2025 full-year performance forecasts, eight companies recorded a year-over-year increase in their lowest net profit of more than 41%, while the highest net profit increase reached as high as 242%.

Entering 2026, on top of elevated levels, gold price volatility has become clearly larger. Since the start of this year, the amplitude of the London spot gold price benchmark has reached 26%, the decline in March alone was 12%, and the single-month amplitude was 15%. At the same time, high-priced gold also imposes higher requirements on enterprises’ earnings resilience and cost-control capabilities amid industry-wide upward pressure on costs. As global resource nationalism rises and localized employment and cultural differences further increase the complexity of overseas operations and overall costs, the challenge grows further.

In response, Chifeng Gold believes that, from a fundamental perspective, gold prices still have upward support for three reasons: first, expectations for Federal Reserve interest-rate cuts and the downside room for the U.S. dollar index help strengthen gold’s financial and monetary attributes; second, geopolitical risk remains at a high level; third, the “de-dollarization” trend has not changed, and the trend of central banks increasing gold holdings is hard to reverse.

However, Chifeng Gold also believes that, in the future, the pull of certain unconventional factors on gold prices may weaken somewhat, and gold prices may, in phases, return to the upper end of the range determined by fundamentals. “On the one hand, external geopolitical policy pressure may ease somewhat, shifting attention to the internal economy; on the other hand, the market’s phased over-trading of expectations for monetary policy is gradually converging, and the assessment of the Federal Reserve’s policy will return to the U.S. economic fundamentals.” Chifeng Gold said.

Regarding risks from metal price volatility, Chifeng Gold said it will adhere to cost control and efficiency improvement, scale-related efficiency improvement, and technology-related efficiency improvement. It will control unit costs through methods such as capacity expansion to improve efficiency, centralized procurement, intelligent upgrades, and management optimization; it will also make rational use of financial instruments such as hedging and preservation to manage risks from commodity price fluctuations, and enhance the robustness and controllability of operating performance.

“After the benefit from gold price increases is stripped away, what is the true quality of our endogenous growth?” Chifeng Gold Chairman Wang Jianhua raised this question in the financial report. The financial report shows that Chifeng Gold summarizes the company’s subsequent work priorities as: “increase production, reduce costs, and make resources solid.”

The financial report shows that in 2026, Chifeng Gold’s target for gold production and sales volume is 14.7 tons, and for electrolytic copper is 11,000 tons. For comparison, in 2025 Chifeng Gold’s gold production volume was 14.5 tons and electrolytic copper production volume was 6,754 tons. Chifeng Gold plans to continue to increase exploration investment and the intensity of intelligent and large-scale technological upgrades for mines. While ensuring completion of production targets, it will seek efficiency gains from management.

At the same time, Chifeng Gold plans to strengthen resource reserves with greater efforts. Specifically, in domestic mines, it will accelerate the timetable from exploration to development and mining. At the Seibang gold-copper mine in Laos, it will complete high-standard detailed surveys within the year. At the Wassasa gold mine in Ghana, it will complete exploration-to-development and resource conversion. Meanwhile, it will fully leverage the advantages of the capital platform to establish a systematic global project screening and evaluation mechanism, focusing on high-quality resource projects that have synergy with existing assets and possess independent scale-effective benefits. These will be reserved for expansion beyond the current footprint.

Wang Jianhua said in the financial report that Chifeng Gold will continue to work hard to continuously and significantly improve operating performance, enhance miners’ benefits, increase cash dividends, and share development outcomes with shareholders and workers.

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