PREVIEW — Synthos Deep Dive v2 template · not published · founder review · 2026-07-03
SSR Mining SSRM
Basic Materials · Gold · Synthos Deep Dive · 2026-07-03
$30.64
Watch
Risk 7Growth 5Exponential 2Fair value $38 $22–$47
The 20-second read
What it does
SSR Mining (Nasdaq: SSRM) is a precious-metals producer with operating assets in the USA, Canada, and Argentina, plus a legacy position in Türkiye. Founded 1946, headquartered in Denver, CO; CEO Rodney Antal; ~4,800 employees.
Where it stands
$30.64 · Watch · fair value ~$38 (+24% vs price) · Risk 7/10, Growth 5/10
Where it's going
A net-cash gold/silver producer at ~7× peak-cycle forward earnings — it gets interesting on a pullback toward the 200-DMA (~$26); a gold correction or another operational failure at a key mine breaks the thesis.
The gold price — every line of the forward case is underwritten at elevated metal prices; second: another operational failure (the 2024 Çöpler disaster is the template)
One-line thesis. SSR Mining is a mid-tier gold/silver producer (Marigold in Nevada, Cripple Creek & Victor in Colorado, Seabee in Saskatchewan, Puna in Argentina) that has rebuilt violently off its 2024 mine-disaster lows — FY25 revenue +66.6% to $1.66B, Q1-26 revenue +83.7% YoY with a 61% gross margin, net cash on the balance sheet, and a 7.6% FCF yield — but the stock has already tripled off the low, the trailing GAAP number still carries a −$365M discontinued-operations charge, consensus EPS peaks in 2027 and fades to $2.68 by 2030, and there is no expert coverage in our KB, so this is a Watch: the business is cheap on forward earnings only if gold stays where it is.
◆ Synthos call — WatchA net-cash gold/silver producer at ~7× peak-cycle forward earnings — it gets interesting on a pullback toward the 200-DMA (~$26); a gold correction or another operational failure at a key mine breaks the thesis.
Downside Risk (lower = safer)
7/10 · High
Net cash and a 5.3× current ratio, but a single-commodity earnings stream, a recent catastrophic mine failure (2024) with a −$365M discontinued-ops charge still landing in Q1-26, ~28% Argentina revenue, and only ~5 covering analysts.
Growth Quality
5/10 · Moderate
Revenue +66.6% FY25 and +83.7% YoY in Q1-26 with ROIC ~11% and cash-rich income quality (1.46) — but the growth is gold-price + acquisition driven, and consensus EPS fades from $4.98 (2027E) to $2.68 (2030E).
Exponential Potential
2/10 · Low
Not an exponential — a cyclical commodity producer whose own analyst deck models revenue and EPS declining after 2027 as mine plans deplete; the upside driver is the gold price, not compounding.
⚖ Reverse-DCF cross-checkMarket-implied growth ≈ 10%/yrTo justify today’s $31, earnings would have to compound roughly 10% a year for 10 years (9% discount rate). Analysts forecast ~14%/yr, so the market is pricing in LESS than what the Street expects.What do the 5 tiers mean? (Core · Tactical · Watch · Hold · Avoid)
Buy — CoreOwn it as a foundation — start or add now, size it for years, let dips be gifts.
Buy — TacticalGood price + confirmed trend + a defined exit — buy the setup, not a marriage.
WatchWe want the business, just not at this price/setup — act only when the listed trigger hits.
HoldFine to keep if you own it — no reason to buy more; new money does better elsewhere.
AvoidDon't own it — the problem is the business or the expectations, so a cheaper price won't fix it.
In plain English
SSR Mining digs gold (about 70% of sales) and silver (about 23%) out of mines in the United States, Canada, and Argentina. When the gold price is high — as it has been — the company mints money: last quarter it kept 61 cents of every revenue dollar as gross profit and it holds more cash than debt.
The stock looks strikingly cheap: about 7 times next year's expected earnings, versus roughly 27 times for the market. But there are three honest catches. First, those earnings depend almost entirely on the gold price staying elevated — a miner cannot control the price of what it sells. Second, the company's own analyst estimates show profits peaking next year and then shrinking every year through 2030 as its mines age. Third, this company had a genuine catastrophe in 2024 — a collapse at its largest mine, in Türkiye — and the final accounting for that exit is still hitting the income statement this year.
Here's what our three scores mean in everyday terms:
Downside Risk 7/10 (fairly high). The balance sheet is strong (net cash), but the earnings stream hangs on one commodity price, one of its regions is Argentina, and its recent operational history includes a disaster.
Growth Quality 5/10 (mixed). The growth is real cash — but it was bought (an acquisition) and gifted (a gold rally), not compounded, and it is forecast to reverse.
Exponential Potential 2/10 (low). Nothing here accelerates. It's a cyclical: you're renting a gold price, not owning a compounding machine.
The one big worry: if gold corrects meaningfully, the "7× earnings" math evaporates at the same moment the stock's momentum crowd exits — a double hit. That's why we'd rather engage ~15% lower, where a gold pullback is partly pre-paid.
Solid = price · dashed = 50-day average · dotted = 200-day average · amber = 52-week high/low. Price above both averages is an uptrend.
Bollinger Bands 20-day average ± 2 standard deviations
The shaded band widens when the stock gets more volatile. Riding the upper edge = strong momentum (sometimes stretched); the lower edge = weak / potentially oversold.
Blue crossing above amber (bars flip green) = momentum turning up; below (bars red) = turning down. Bar height = the size of that gap.
Relative performance vs S&P 500 & its sector (XLB (sector)), set to 100 a year ago
Solid = SSRM · dashed = S&P 500 · dotted = XLB (sector). A rising line means it is beating that benchmark — the sector line shows whether it is a leader or laggard within its own group.
Darker bars = actual results, brighter = analyst estimates. Taller bars to the right = expected growth.
Key stats an RIA wants
Price$30.64
Market cap$6B
P/E trailing27×
P/E FY26E / FY27E7× / 6×
EV / Sales3.1×
EV / EBITDA7.1×
Gross margin55.8%
Net margin12.2%
Dividend yield0.00%
Beta0.878
52-wk range$12 – $36
RSI(14)64
50 / 200-DMA$30 / $26
12-mo return+133% (SPY +21%)
Street target$40 ($39–$40)
Analyst grades7 Buy · 3 Hold · 1 Sell
FMP ratingB+
Next earnings2026-08-05
What the experts actually said 0 traceable claims on SSRM · showing the highest-conviction voices
Every claim reconciles to a real claim_id in the Synthos knowledge base — this is the evidence the verdict is built on, not vibes. Management (the company itself) is shown but half-weighted; one cautionary voice is included on purpose.
1. What it is
SSR Mining (Nasdaq: SSRM) is a precious-metals producer with operating assets in the USA, Canada, and Argentina, plus a legacy position in Türkiye. Founded 1946, headquartered in Denver, CO; CEO Rodney Antal; ~4,800 employees. Reported segments per the profile: Çöpler (Türkiye — suspended/exiting, see below), Marigold (Nevada), Cripple Creek & Victor (Colorado — the CC&V acquisition shows up as −$107.8M acquisitionsNet in the FY25 cash-flow statement), Seabee (Saskatchewan), and Puna (Argentina, silver/lead/zinc).
Revenue mix (FY25, from filings):
By metal:Gold $1,160.2M (~70%) · Silver $384.4M (~23%) · Lead $44.1M · Zinc $4.5M · Other $36.4M. This is a nearly pure precious-metals price bet.
By geography:United States $991.0M (~61%) · Argentina $459.5M (~28%) · Canada $179.1M (~11%). Türkiye revenue has gone from $442.4M (2023) → $64.3M (2024) → absent from the FY25 segment table — the footprint of the February 2024 Çöpler heap-leach failure and the subsequent shutdown/exit. Q1-26 books a −$365.3M loss from discontinued operations, consistent with SSRM derecognizing/exiting Çöpler; the data file does not include the disposal terms, so we flag rather than model them.
The strategic story: a US-weighted mid-tier producer that replaced its lost Turkish production by buying Cripple Creek & Victor and riding record gold prices — production quality up, jurisdiction risk down, but commodity dependence total.
2. The expert thesis
No expert-panel coverage — this note is fundamentals-driven. A search of the Synthos knowledge base (53k claims) returns zero traceable claims on SSRM from any tracked voice. That is the honest house standard for screen-surfaced names: this dive was triggered by the quant momentum screen (+133% 12-mo), not by expert conviction, and the conviction rating is None by construction. There is no bull thesis to reconcile and no cautionary short thesis either — everything in §3 onward is built from filings, consensus estimates, and technicals in the data file.
3. Synthos scores & the Bull / Base / Bear cases
The one-glance judgment — three scores, 0–10, each anchored to real metrics (not probabilities we can't honestly calibrate):
Score
0–10
The read
Downside Risk(lower = safer)
7 · High
Net cash (net debt −$122.9M FY25), current ratio 5.3×, beta 0.88 — the balance sheet is genuinely strong. Against that: a single-commodity earnings stream, ~28% Argentina revenue, a 2024 operational catastrophe whose accounting tail (−$365.3M discontinued-ops in Q1-26) is still landing, thin coverage (~5 EPS analysts), and a stock that has already run +160% off its 52-week low. Beta understates commodity risk.
Growth Quality
5 · Moderate
FY25 revenue +66.6%, Q1-26 +83.7% YoY at a 61.3% gross margin; ROIC ~11.1%, income quality 1.46 (cash exceeds accounting income — the good direction). But the growth is bought (CC&V) plus priced (gold), not compounded — and consensus has EPS peaking 2027 ($4.98) then fading to $2.68 by 2030.
Exponential Potential
2 · Low
The second derivative is negative by design: consensus revenue $2.44B (2026E) → $2.68B (2027E) → $2.59B (2028E) → $2.26B (2029E) → $1.99B (2030E). Mine plans deplete; there is no TAM story. Upside comes from the gold price, not acceleration.
The three cases (our own scenario model — assumptions shown; each target is a ~12–18-month fair value). We deliberately do not attach probabilities: the base case is the expected path; the cases bound the range. All multiples are applied to consensus EPS — labeled assumptions, not a DCF with false precision.
Case
Key assumptions
Fair value
Bull
Gold stays elevated through 2027; CC&V + Marigold deliver; 2027E EPS $4.98 earns a ~9.5× multiple (still a discount to market — it's a cyclical peak).
~$47 (+53%)
Base(our anchor)
2026E EPS ~$4.41 roughly lands; a mid-tier producer at peak-cycle earnings deserves ~8.5× — essentially in line with the Street's (very thin) $39.50 consensus.
~$38 (+24%)
Bear
Gold corrects 15–20%; EPS compresses toward the out-year fade path (~$2.70) faster than modeled, at ~8×; momentum holders exit simultaneously.
~$22 (−28%)
Synthos fair value = the base case, ~$38 (+24%), full range $22–$47. Two honesty flags on the inputs: (1) the Street "consensus" target of $39.50 is a high of $40 and a low of $39 — effectively two analysts, so it corroborates rather than anchors; (2) the consensus estimate set is internally inconsistent (2026E net income avg $957M exceeds 2026E EBITDA avg $529M, which is impossible — different analyst pools per line), so we lean on the EPS line (5 analysts) and hold it loosely. This is a tracked call — the Forecaster Scorecard grades it once it matures.
4. Exponential Potential
Synthos separates compounders (durable high returns on capital) from exponentials (accelerating multi-baggers). SSRM is neither — it is a cyclical:
Forward growth peaks immediately: consensus revenue +47% in 2026E ($2.44B), +10% in 2027E ($2.68B), then negative: −3% (2028E), −13% (2029E), −12% (2030E). EPS follows: $4.41 → $4.98 → $4.67 → $3.91 → $2.68.
The second derivative is negative — the exact opposite of what earns a high exponential score. This is a mine-plan depletion curve plus a mean-reverting commodity-price assumption, and the analysts drawing it are the same ones rating the stock Buy.
No TAM logic applies. Gold demand doesn't compound with adoption; the "room to run" is the metal price, which we do not forecast.
Reinvestment reality: capex is real and rising (capex/revenue ~8.9% TTM, capex/depreciation 1.62×) — mines must be bought or built to replace ounces, which is why growth had to be acquired (CC&V).
Exponential Potential: Low (2/10). If you want gold exposure, this is a leveraged way to rent it — but nothing here compounds on its own.
Margins: FY25 gross margin 35.7%, EBITDA $673.9M (40.6% margin), operating income $478.5M. TTM: gross 55.8%, EBITDA margin 43.0%, net margin 12.2% (dragged by the discontinued-ops charge).
Earnings quality — read carefully. FY25 net income $402.7M / diluted EPS $1.85 is clean. But Q1-26 GAAP is a net loss of −$106.5M (EPS −$0.51) because a −$365.3M discontinued-operations charge swamped $250.2M of continuing-ops net income. The adjusted number the Street graded was $1.15 vs $0.81 expected — a 42% beat. Income-quality ratio 1.46 (operating cash flow exceeds accounting income) — the cash is real.
Balance sheet: cash + short-term investments $575.6M vs total debt $411.9M (of which $249.6M is current — a near-term maturity to watch — plus $93.6M of leases) → net cash $122.9M; net-debt/EBITDA −0.69×. Current ratio 5.3×, zero goodwill/intangibles, tangible book $21.54/share (price/tangible-book 1.74× — miners are asset-backed in a way the MRVLs of the world are not). Note $805M of minority interest sits in total equity — attributable economics are slightly smaller than the consolidated statements suggest.
6. Valuation — priced in or room?
The headline multiples are cheap-with-an-asterisk: 26.6× trailing (distorted by the Q1-26 discontinued-ops charge; on FY25's clean $1.85 diluted it's ~16.6×), ~6.9× 2026E EPS ($4.41) and ~6.2× 2027E ($4.98), EV/EBITDA 7.1× TTM, EV/sales 3.1×, P/B 1.74×, FCF yield 7.6%. FMP's letter rating is B+ (overall 3/5; DCF score 4/5, P/E score 1/5 on the distorted trailing number). The reverse read: at ~$30.64 the market is already discounting the consensus EPS fade — a flat gold price makes this cheap, a rising one makes it very cheap, and a falling one makes the multiple meaningless because the E collapses. Street targets (context only): $39.50 consensus, but the $39–$40 high-low band reveals it's ~two contributors — far too thin to anchor on. Grades: 7 Buy · 3 Hold · 1 Sell. Our base case ($38, ~8.5× 2026E) lands beside the Street's number by arithmetic, not by deference. This is not a "the market is missing it" setup; it is a "the market is charging a proper cyclical discount" setup.
7. Technicals (from the tech block)
Trend: up but cooling. $30.64 sits above the 50-DMA ($29.96) and well above the 200-DMA ($26.27); 50 above 200 (golden-cross posture). MACD +0.007 — essentially flat, momentum stalling.
Location:−14.3% off the 52-week high ($35.74) — also the max drawdown from peak — and +159.7% off the 52-week low ($11.80). (The quote block's intraday-based range is $11.70–$36.52 — minor source discrepancy, flagged.)
Momentum: RSI(14) 63.6 — firm but not overbought.
Relative strength (the tell): 12-mo +132.8% vs SPY +21.1% / QQQ +31.2% — enormous. But 3-mo is −3.0% vs SPY +14.6% / QQQ +23.6% — the stock has been lagging by ~18 points for a quarter. 6-mo +39.8% vs SPY +10.2%.
Read: a huge 12-month winner that has gone sideways-to-down for three months while the market ran. That is either a healthy consolidation above a rising 200-DMA or early distribution. For a Watch verdict it sets the trigger cleanly: the ~$26 zone (200-DMA) is where valuation support and trend support coincide.
8. Moat & competitive position
Miners don't have moats in the franchise sense; they have asset quality and jurisdiction. SSRM's post-Çöpler portfolio is genuinely improved on the second axis: ~61% of revenue from the United States (Nevada + Colorado), ~11% Canada — versus peers carrying West-African or deep-South-African risk. Asset quality is mid-tier: Marigold is a large, long-lived run-of-mine heap leach; CC&V adds scale in Colorado; Seabee is small but high-grade; Puna is a solid silver producer with Argentina attached. What SSRM does not have: the scale of an AngloGold ($42.5B) or Kinross ($29.5B), or the royalty-model economics of Wheaton ($52.3B) / Franco-Nevada ($41.0B) that the FMP peer list mixes in.
Peer set (FMP-supplied, market cap): AngloGold $42.5B · Wheaton $52.3B · Franco-Nevada $41.0B · Gold Fields $31.0B · Kinross $29.5B · Pan American $19.0B · Royal Gold $14.0B · Coeur $11.1B · Harmony $10.3B · Equinox $8.1B · Eldorado $6.7B · SSRM $6.36B · B2Gold $5.4B · OR Royalties $5.8B · Sandstorm $3.6B · Centerra $3.3B · Fortuna $2.6B · DRDGOLD $1.9B. Caveat: royalty companies (WPM, FNV, RGLD, SAND, OR) deserve structurally higher multiples and shouldn't be compared 1:1; against operating mid-tiers, SSRM's ~7× forward EPS and 7.1× EV/EBITDA read as middle-of-the-pack cheap, not anomalous.
9. Management, capital allocation & guidance
Capital allocation: currently everything goes into the business — no dividend (yield 0%), no buybacks in FY25; the last shareholder returns were 2022–23 (dividends of ~$57–59M/yr plus buybacks), suspended after the 2024 incident. FY25 spent $234.2M on capex and $107.8M on acquisitions (CC&V) against $480.1M of operating cash flow, while modestly adding debt (+$34.2M). Rebuilding first, returning later — defensible given the year they had; a restored dividend/buyback would be a real signal (watch item).
Insider activity: nothing discretionary in the file — the 2026-07-01 filings are seven routine director deferred-share-unit awards (~950 units each, price $0), and the 2026-04-01 filing is an EVP tax-withholding share disposition at $31.62. No open-market buys, no discretionary sales. Neutral tell.
Guidance: the data file contains no management guidance or earnings-call text for SSRM (no SSRM_mgmt claims in the KB), so we cannot quote production/cost guidance — flagged as a coverage gap rather than filled in from memory. The earnings-calendar consensus for Q2-26 (EPS $0.75, rev ~$522M) is the Street's proxy for it.
Execution record (the data's own verdict): four of the last five prints beat — Q1-26 EPS $1.15 vs $0.81e, Q4-25 $0.88 vs $0.59e, Q2-25 $0.51 vs $0.23e, Q1-25 $0.29 vs $0.08e; Q3-25 was in line ($0.32 vs $0.31e) on a revenue miss. Post-disaster execution has been consistently better than expected.
10. Catalysts & what to watch
Next earnings: 2026-08-04 (Q2 2026; Street EPS $0.75, revenue ~$522M). Key lines: gold ounces sold and cost trends at Marigold/CC&V, Puna silver volumes, and any update on the Çöpler exit accounting.
The gold price — the dominant variable; no company-specific catalyst outweighs it.
Çöpler resolution: the −$365.3M Q1-26 discontinued-ops charge suggests the exit is being crystallized; confirmation that liabilities are capped (or any residual Türkiye recovery) is a swing factor in both directions.
The $249.6M current-debt maturity: covered ~2.3× by cash on hand, but watch the refinance/repay decision.
Capital-returns restart: a reinstated dividend or buyback would mark management's own signal that the rebuild is complete.
Argentina: ~28% of revenue; policy/FX shifts move Puna's realized economics.
Thesis tripwires (what would change the call): a close below the 200-DMA (~$26) with gold falling — that's the entry zone only if gold is the reason, not an SSRM-specific failure; any new operational incident at Marigold/CC&V/Seabee (instant Avoid pending facts); consensus 2027E EPS revised below ~$4.00; or an adverse surprise in the Çöpler exit liabilities.
11. Key risks
Commodity price (dominant): ~93% of revenue is gold + silver. The entire forward P/E case is underwritten at elevated metal prices; a 15–20% gold correction likely compresses both the E and the multiple simultaneously.
Operational/tailings risk: the February 2024 Çöpler heap-leach failure was a fatal, company-defining disaster — it produced the FY24 loss (−$261.3M net, −$322.3M operating, $610.8M of other expenses) and the Q1-26 −$365.3M discontinued-ops charge. Mining carries low-probability, catastrophic-severity risk that beta (0.88) does not capture; SSRM has demonstrated the tail.
Estimate fade / depletion: consensus itself models EPS −46% from 2027E to 2030E. Owning this beyond the cycle requires believing in reserve additions or M&A not yet in the numbers.
Jurisdiction: Argentina ~28% of revenue (FX, export policy); residual Türkiye legal/closure liabilities.
Thin coverage & thin targets: ~5 EPS analysts near-term (1 by 2030), a two-analyst price-target band, and an internally inconsistent estimate set (2026E net income > 2026E EBITDA) — the "consensus" here is soft data.
Momentum unwind: +132.8% in 12 months with 3-mo returns already negative — screen-surfaced momentum names cut both ways.
No expert underwriting: zero KB voices; there is no high-skill thesis to lean on if the story wobbles — and no independent bear either.
12. Verdict, position sizing & monitoring
Watch. The business case is real: a net-cash, US-weighted mid-tier producer earning a 61% quarterly gross margin, generating a 7.6% FCF yield, beating estimates four of the last five quarters, at ~7× forward earnings and 1.7× tangible book. The reasons this is not a Buy today: the forward earnings are peak-cycle and consensus-modeled to fade −46% by 2030; the stock has already tripled off its low and is lagging the market by ~18 points over the last three months; the Çöpler accounting tail is still landing; the Street backdrop is two price targets and five analysts; and we have zero expert-panel conviction behind it. At ~$26 (the rising 200-DMA, ~5.9× 2026E EPS, ~30% below base fair value) the risk/reward flips and this becomes a tactical buy if gold — not SSRM — is the reason for the dip.
Sizing: none today. If the trigger hits, satellite ~1–2% maximum — a single-commodity, single-company bet with demonstrated catastrophic tail risk should never be sized like a core holding.
Monitoring: re-underwrite on the §10 tripwires; formal re-score each earnings print (next 2026-08-04). This verdict is logged as a tracked Synthos call as of 2026-07-06 at $30.64.
Single biggest risk: the gold price; second, another operational failure — 2024 proved the tail is real, not theoretical.
Provenance & disclosures
Traceability:0 KB claims, 0 expert voices — a grep of the 53k-claim Synthos knowledge base returns no SSRM coverage. This note is fundamentals-driven by design (quant momentum screen entry), and the conviction rating is None by construction; no expert conviction was fabricated to fill the gap.
Data as-of: fundamentals 2026-05-05 filing (Q1 2026, quarter ended 2026-03-31) · estimates & prices 2026-07-06 (FMP). Forward figures are analyst consensus, labeled as estimates; analyst counts are thin (5 EPS analysts for 2026E, falling to 1 by 2030E).
Estimate-quality caveat: the consensus set is internally inconsistent (2026E net income avg $957M exceeds 2026E EBITDA avg $529M — different analyst pools per line item); we anchored on the EPS line and hold it loosely.
Earnings-quality caveat: trailing GAAP EPS is depressed by the Q1-26 −$365.3M discontinued-operations charge (Çöpler exit); continuing-ops economics are the ones underwritten here. The Çöpler incident itself (February 2024) is public-record context; all figures around it come from the data file.
Guidance gap: no management guidance or earnings-call text is in our dataset for SSRM — production/cost guidance is not quoted rather than recalled from memory.
Peer caveat: the FMP-supplied peer list mixes royalty companies (WPM, FNV, RGLD, SAND, OR) with operators; multiples were compared against operating mid-tiers only.
Not investment advice. Independent research, educational and informational only, never personalized. Hypothetical/forward figures are labeled; the only performance numbers Synthos will headline are the live, real-money Flagship's.
Version: 2026-07-06. Prior versions available via the deep-dive version dropdown ("based on the info at the time").