Aris Mining ARIS
Basic Materials · Gold · Synthos Deep Dive · 2026-07-06
The Overview
Aris Mining digs gold out of the ground, mostly in Colombia. Its two producing operations have been expanding at exactly the moment gold prices went on a tear, so its sales more than doubled year-over-year last quarter and profits exploded — one recent quarter earned more than the entire previous year.
The stock looks very cheap on paper: you pay about 6.7 times what analysts expect it to earn this year, the company carries almost no net debt, and it now generates real free cash. The catch is threefold. First, those profits depend almost entirely on the gold price — the company doesn't control its own selling price. Second, everything is concentrated in one country, Colombia, where taxes already take a huge bite (~62% of pre-tax profit in 2025) and political or security surprises are possible. Third, the shares have already had their run — up 132% in a year — and have been falling for the past three months while the market rose.
Here's what our three scores mean in everyday terms:
- Downside Risk 7/10 (fairly high). Small company, jumpy stock (beta ~1.95), one country, one commodity. The clean balance sheet is the only real cushion.
- Growth Quality 6/10 (decent). The growth is spectacular and the cash is real — but it's rented from the gold price, not owned, and the company has funded expansion partly by issuing more shares.
- Exponential Potential 4/10 (limited). This is a cyclical ramp, not a compounding machine — even the analysts covering it pencil in shrinking revenue after 2028.
The one big worry: if gold rolls over, the cheap-looking earnings evaporate and the stock re-rates down hard — and no balance sheet fixes that.
Putting a number on it: our fair-value estimate is $20 against a current price of $20.27 — consistent with our call to stay away or wait for a better setup.
Our summary metrics
Beta 1.95, $3.3B small cap, single-jurisdiction Colombia, a ~62% FY25 effective tax take, and earnings that live and die with the gold price — the clean balance sheet (net-debt/EBITDA 0.16×) is what keeps this off an 8.
Revenue +82% FY25 and +136% YoY in Q1'26 with real margin expansion and 2.6× income quality — but it is commodity-price-driven, capex eats 23% of revenue, and shares out are up ~44% since FY23.
Growth is violent near-term (Marmato/Segovia ramp) but it is a gold miner, not a TAM story — the Street's own estimates roll over after 2028, so this is a cyclical ramp, not an exponential.
What does “fair value” mean?
Fair value is Synthos’s estimate of what one share is worth today, based on our model of the company’s future cash generation and the risks to it. It is not a price target or a prediction of where the stock trades next quarter — it’s the price where we think risk and reward are balanced. Above it, you’re paying for outcomes better than our base case; below it, the market is offering a margin of safety.
The model’s inputs and weightings are proprietary — they’re the product. What we publish is the output, We don’t publish a reverse-DCF cross-check for pre-profit companies — negative or missing earnings break that math — so take this number on our modeling alone.
What do the 5 tiers mean? (Core · Tactical · Watch · Hold · Avoid)
Exponential Potential
Growth is violent near-term (Marmato/Segovia ramp) but it is a gold miner, not a TAM story — the Street's own estimates roll over after 2028, so this is a cyclical ramp, not an exponential.
What could take this further than the base case — and where the market may be underpricing it. Full forward-growth and acceleration math in Deeper analysis, §4 below.
Deeper analysis
Technicals, fundamentals, valuation, and the full expert-claim evidence panel — the detail behind the numbers above.
Reference table
| Street consensus | $23.29 target (high $30 / low $18 / median $22; 6 Buy · 5 Hold · 1 Sell) — context, not our anchor |
| Valuation | ~19× trailing EPS · ~6.7× 2026E · 4.4× 2027E · EV/EBITDA 7.6× · EV/S 2.9× · P/B 2.1× · FCF yield 5.9% |
| Technicals | Mixed-to-broken — $15.98 sits below the 50-DMA ($17.15) and exactly on the 200-DMA ($15.98); −29.5% off the 52-wk high; RSI 50.7 neutral; MACD negative; −17.2% over 3 mo vs SPY +14.6% |
| Conviction | None — 0 expert voices, 0 traceable claims; screen-surfaced, fundamentals-only |
| Position sizing | None yet — Watch; if triggered, satellite ≤1–2%, sized for a 1.95-beta single-country miner |
What the experts actually said
No independent expert claims in the Synthos knowledge base yet for ARIS — this dive is fundamentals- and technicals-driven, not panel-driven.
Price & moving averages 12 months · 50 & 200-day averages · 52-week range
Solid line = price · dashed line = 50-day average · dotted line = 200-day average · the two thin horizontal lines mark the 52-week high and low. Price above both averages is an uptrend.
Data summary: last close $20.27, 25% above the 50-day average ($16), 18% above the 200-day average ($17) — an uptrend. 11% below the 52-week high of $23, 147% above the 52-week low of $8.
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.
Data summary: price $20.27 is currently inside the band (band $14–$23).
RSI (14) momentum gauge · 0–100
Above 70 (overbought zone, shaded) = overbought, below 30 (oversold zone, shaded) = oversold. Currently 64.
MACD 12 / 26 / 9 · trend & momentum
The MACD line crossing above the signal line (bars flip to the up color) = momentum turning up; crossing below (bars flip to the down color) = turning down. Bar height = the size of that gap.
Data summary: MACD is currently above its signal line by 0.23, positive momentum.
Relative performance vs S&P 500 & its sector (XLB (sector)), set to 100 a year ago
Solid = ARIS · 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.
Forward revenue & earnings actual → estimate · "FY" = fiscal year, "E" = estimate
Darker bars = actual results, brighter = analyst estimates. Taller bars to the right = expected growth.
Key stats an RIA wants
1. What it is
Aris Mining Corporation (NYSE: ARIS) is a gold producer headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, established in 1982, with ~3,801 employees; CEO Neil Woodyer. Per the data profile, the portfolio spans Segovia, Marmato, Soto Norte, Toroparu, and Juby — anchored by producing operations in Colombia (Segovia, Marmato), with the balance at development stage. Fiscal year ends December 31.
Revenue mix — what the data does and doesn't show:
- By product: the FMP segment block for ARIS is contaminated — the 2021–2022 rows show "Produced Water Handling / Water Solutions," which belong to Aris Water Solutions, a different company (CIK 0001865187) that previously used this ticker. No valid product-segment split for Aris Mining is available in this data pull. Honest read: it is a single-commodity gold producer; the segmentation question is mine-by-mine, and this file does not provide it.
- By geography: the geographic segment block is empty — no ship-to or country revenue split available. The profile describes the operating mines as Colombian, which is the working assumption for jurisdiction risk in §11.
The investable story: a mid-tier gold producer mid-way through an expansion (the quarterly revenue ramp in §5 is the fingerprint) hitting peak operating leverage at the same moment the gold price is historically strong.
2. The expert thesis (traceable)
No expert-panel coverage — this note is fundamentals-driven. The Synthos KB contains zero traceable claims on ARIS (0 voices, 0 claims). That is the honest standard for a screen-surfaced name: nobody in our curated expert pool has staked a public, reconcilable position on this company, so there is no conviction score, no borrowed thesis, and the bull/bear cases in §3 are built entirely from the filed financials, analyst estimates, and technicals in the data pull. Treat the analysis accordingly — it carries model risk without the cross-check of independent expert judgment.
Street coverage (context, not conviction): 12 rated analysts — 6 Buy, 5 Hold, 1 Sell (FMP consensus label "Buy") — with a $23.29 consensus target (high $30, low $18, median $22). Note the estimate tables behind the out-year numbers are thin: 1–3 analysts per line item beyond 2026 (§6).
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-debt/EBITDA 0.16×, current ratio 1.78, interest coverage 13.2× — the balance sheet is genuinely clean. Against it: a $3.3B small cap with beta 1.95, one commodity, essentially one jurisdiction (Colombia), a ~62% FY25 effective tax take, ~44% share-count growth since FY23, and a stock that just underperformed the market by ~32 points over three months. |
| Growth Quality | 6 · High | Revenue +81.7% FY25, +136% YoY in Q1'26; gross margin 38.4% (FY24) → 49.6% (FY25) → 58.3% (Q1'26); income quality 2.61 (cash flow far exceeds book earnings); ROIC 10.2%. But the growth is gold-price-rented, capex runs 22.7% of revenue, and expansion was part-funded with equity ($128M issued FY25). |
| Exponential Potential | 4 · Moderate | The near-term ramp is steep (2026E revenue +74%), but the Street's own numbers peak in 2028 ($2.50B) and then decline (2029E $2.31B, 2030E $1.60B). Gold ounces are not a compounding TAM; this is a cyclical ramp with a good balance sheet, not an exponential. |
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, so a weighted blend would just restate it with false precision. The cases bound the range; the scores summarize them.
| Case | Key assumptions | Fair value |
|---|---|---|
| Bull | Gold stays strong through 2027; the Marmato/Segovia ramp delivers 2027E EPS ~$3.64 on schedule and the market pays ~8× a proven mid-tier producer — this lands on the Street-high $30. | ~$30 (+88%) |
| Base (our anchor) | 2026E EPS ~$2.39 roughly lands (guided ramp + current gold), but a single-country gold producer earning cyclically-elevated profits deserves a discounted ~8.5× — below the Street's $23.29 because we haircut peak-cycle earnings. | ~$20 (+25%) |
| Bear | Gold rolls over; EPS reverts toward the pre-ramp 2025 consensus run-rate (~$1.08) and the market pays ~10× trough-ish earnings; Colombia fiscal/security noise compresses the multiple further. | ~$11 (−31%) |
Synthos fair value = the base case, ~$20 (+25%), with the full $11–$30 span as the honest range. We sit ~14% below the Street's $23.29 — deliberately: the consensus target extrapolates peak-cycle gold earnings at a full multiple, and we haircut that. The DCF assumptions are ours and labeled (8.5× our 2026E anchor, cyclical haircut); note FMP's own DCF score for ARIS is 1/5, flagging the same peak-earnings sensitivity. 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-from-here). ARIS is neither — it is a cyclical ramp:
- Forward growth (steep, then over): consensus revenue $928M (FY25 actual) → $1.61B (2026E, +74%) → $2.29B (2027E, +42%) → $2.50B (2028E, +9%) → $2.31B (2029E, −7%) → $1.60B (2030E, −31%). The second derivative turns negative inside the estimate window itself.
- EPS path: $0.42 (FY25) → $2.39 (2026E) → $3.64 (2027E) → $3.87 (2028E) → $3.46 (2029E) → $5.32 (2030E). Note the 2030 line implies EPS rising on sharply falling revenue — a single-analyst artifact (§6) we do not underwrite.
- Room to run: at $3.3B, a re-rate to the Street-high $30 (~$6.2B) is plausible in a strong gold tape — but there is no mechanism for open-ended compounding: ounces deplete, grades vary, and the commodity sets the price.
- Reinvestment: capex is heavy (22.7% of revenue TTM; $248M FY25 vs $317M operating cash flow) and expansion has required equity — the opposite of the asset-light exponential profile.
Exponential Potential: Moderate (4/10). Fast now, self-limiting later — buy it (if at all) as a cyclical value/momentum trade, never as a compounding core.
5. Financials (real numbers — FMP annual/quarterly)
- Revenue: FY25 $927.7M, +81.7% (FY24 $510.6M, +14.1%; FY23 $447.7M, +11.9%; FY22 $400.0M). The step-change is the expansion ramp colliding with a strong gold price.
- Quarterly trajectory (the ramp in one line): Q1'25 $157.5M → Q2 $203.5M → Q3 $258.1M → Q4 $308.6M → Q1'26 $372.5M (+136.5% YoY). Five straight sequential accelerations.
- Margins: gross margin 38.4% (FY24) → 49.6% (FY25) → 58.3% (Q1'26); TTM EBITDA margin 38.9%; TTM net margin 15.2%. Q1'26 net income was $97.6M (EPS $0.47) — more than the whole of FY25 ($78.3M, EPS $0.42).
- The tax bite — read carefully. FY25 income tax was $127.7M on $207.1M pre-tax = a 61.7% effective rate (TTM ~50%). Colombia's fiscal take is the single biggest wedge between the gross-margin story and the bottom line; any worsening is a direct EPS hit.
- Cash flow: FY25 operating CF $317.5M, capex −$248.2M, FCF +$69.3M — the first clearly positive year after FY24's −$76.7M and FY23's −$9.0M. TTM FCF yield 5.9%. Income quality 2.61× (cash flow well above book earnings) — the earnings are cash-backed, not accrual air.
- Balance sheet: cash $391.2M, total debt $524.6M, net debt $133.4M, net-debt/EBITDA 0.16×, current ratio 1.78, equity $1.44B, PP&E $1.94B of $2.52B total assets, zero goodwill/intangibles. Tangible book value per share $7.63 (P/B 2.1×).
- Dilution (the honest cost of the ramp): weighted shares 142.7M (FY23) → 157.7M (FY24) → 188.6M (FY25) → 206.0M (Q1'26) — up ~44% in three years, including $128.3M of stock issued in FY25. No dividends and no buybacks in the FY25 cash-flow statement.
6. Valuation — priced in or room?
On trailing numbers ARIS is cheap-ish (~19× trailing EPS on the TTM $0.84/share, EV/EBITDA 7.6×, EV/S 2.9×, P/B 2.1×); on forward numbers it screens outright cheap: ~6.7× 2026E EPS ($2.39) and ~4.4× 2027E ($3.64), with a forward PEG of ~0.37. FMP's letter rating is B (overall 3/5) — but its DCF score is 1/5, which is the tell: the model output collapses if you feed it normalized rather than peak gold earnings. That is exactly our base-case haircut. Two honesty flags on the estimates themselves: (1) coverage is thin — 1–3 analysts per out-year line, so the "consensus" is barely a consensus; (2) the out-years are internally ragged (2030E net income of ~$1.02B above 2029E on ~31% less revenue) — we anchor on 2026–2027 and treat everything beyond as noise. Street targets (context): consensus $23.29, median $22, low $18, high $30 — even the low is above spot, which mostly tells you the raters are gold bulls. Not a quality-compounder multiple re-rate story; a cheap-if-gold-holds cyclical.
7. Technicals (from the tech block)
- Trend: cracked. $15.98 is below the 50-DMA ($17.15, −6.8%) and sitting exactly on the 200-DMA ($15.98) — the long-term trendline is being tested right now.
- Location: −29.5% off the 52-week high ($22.68) — also the max drawdown from peak — and +137% off the 52-week low ($6.74).
- Momentum: RSI(14) 50.7 — dead neutral. MACD −0.52 — negative, momentum pointing down.
- Relative strength (the tell): +132.3% over 12 mo (vs SPY +21.1%, QQQ +31.2%) — but −17.2% over 3 mo vs SPY +14.6% and QQQ +23.6%, and −1.5% over 6 mo vs SPY +10.2%. The screen caught last year's leadership; the last quarter is distribution.
- Read: this is precisely why the verdict is Watch, not Buy: a 132%-in-12-months winner that has underperformed the market by ~32 points over three months and is testing its 200-DMA is a coin-flip until the level resolves. Hold above ~$16 and a reclaim of the 50-DMA (~$17.2) = trend intact; a decisive break of the 200-DMA opens the trapdoor toward our ~$14 trigger and below.
8. Moat & competitive position
Gold miners do not have moats in the franchise sense — they have asset quality, cost position, and jurisdiction. What the data supports: gross margin expanded to 58.3% in Q1'26, which at current gold prices implies a healthy mine-level cost position; the balance sheet is clean; and the growth projects (Soto Norte, Toroparu, Juby per the profile) give it a development pipeline most $3B peers lack. What the data does not provide: ounce production, AISC (all-in sustaining cost), or reserve life — so a true cost-curve ranking is not possible from this pull, and we say so rather than guess.
Peer set (FMP-supplied, market cap): Montage Gold $4.9B, Centerra Gold $3.3B, Pan African Resources $3.3B, Allied Gold $3.0B, West African Resources $2.5B, Emerald Resources $2.5B, Snowline Gold $1.7B, Resolute Mining $1.5B, Bellevue Gold $1.4B, Collective Mining $1.3B. A reasonable mid-tier gold cohort (several also single-region stories) — ARIS sits mid-pack on size with one of the steeper near-term revenue ramps.
9. Management, capital allocation & guidance
- Capital allocation: everything into the ground — FY25 capex $248.2M (78% of operating cash flow), no dividends, no buybacks, plus $128.3M of equity issued. That is coherent for an expansion-phase miner, but it means shareholders have been diluted ~44% since FY23 and returns depend entirely on the projects working. (The profile's
lastDividend 0.525field conflicts with the TTM dividend yield of 0 and the cash-flow statement's zero dividends paid — we treat the dividend as zero; the field is likely a stale artifact, see Provenance.) - Insider activity: no valid data. The insider-transaction block in this pull belongs to Aris Water Solutions (CIK 0001865187) — a different issuer that formerly held the ARIS ticker (the October 2025 "D-Return" filings are that company's merger close). No genuine Aris Mining insider reads are available; flagged, not fudged.
- Execution track record (from the earnings calendar): Q1'26 EPS $0.60 vs $0.588 est (beat); Q4'25 $0.46 vs $0.58 (miss); Q3'25 $0.36 vs $0.27 (beat); Q2'25 $0.27 vs $0.32 (miss). Two beats, two misses in the last four — execution is real but lumpy, which is normal for a mine ramp and exactly why we want another confirming print.
- Guidance: no management guidance is captured in this data pull; the KB holds no ARIS management claims. Next print 2026-08-06 is the checkpoint.
10. Catalysts & what to watch
- Next earnings: 2026-08-06 (Q2 2026; Street EPS $0.56, revenue ~$389M). The key line: does the sequential revenue ramp hold ($372.5M in Q1) and does the 58%+ gross margin stick.
- The gold price (the real catalyst): every scenario in §3 is a gold-price scenario wearing a company costume. A sustained gold breakdown invalidates the cheap forward multiple overnight.
- Ramp milestones: evidence the expansion tonnage (Marmato/Segovia per the profile's portfolio) is hitting nameplate — watch revenue per quarter and gross margin as the proxies, since the pull carries no ounce data.
- Colombia fiscal/security headlines: the ~62% FY25 effective tax rate is already extreme; any new royalty/tax move is a straight EPS haircut.
- The 200-DMA (~$16): the technical line in the sand — a decisive break turns the Watch trigger live toward ~$14.
Thesis tripwires (what would change the call): a Q2 revenue print that breaks the sequential ramp; gross margin back below ~50%; a Colombian tax/royalty increase; gold rolling hard; or fresh equity issuance at these prices.
11. Key risks
- Gold price (dominant, uninsurable here): revenue +136% YoY was earned at cyclically strong gold; the data shows no hedge-book information. The forward P/E of 6.7× is only "cheap" if the numerator survives.
- Single-jurisdiction Colombia: producing assets concentrated in one country with a 61.7% FY25 effective tax rate already — fiscal tightening, permitting, or security deterioration hits everything at once. (No geographic segment data exists in the pull to quantify it further.)
- Cyclicality is in the consensus itself: 2029E and 2030E revenue decline — the Street is telling you the ramp crests.
- Dilution: ~44% more shares than FY23; expansion has been part-equity-funded and could be again.
- Estimate fragility: 1–3 analysts per out-year, with internally inconsistent 2030 numbers — the "consensus" anchor is soft.
- Execution lumpiness: two of the last four quarters missed EPS estimates; mine ramps slip.
- Beta 1.95 small cap: whatever goes wrong is amplified ~2× in the price action.
12. Verdict, position sizing & monitoring
Watch. The business result is genuinely impressive — five straight quarters of sequential revenue acceleration, gross margin at 58.3%, positive FCF, near-zero net debt, and a forward multiple (6.7× 2026E) that would be silly for a business that controlled its own prices. But it doesn't: this is a leveraged gold bet in one country, the effective tax rate already confiscates most of the pre-tax spread, shareholders have funded the ramp with 44% dilution, and the price action has already turned — three months of sharp underperformance ending exactly on the 200-DMA. Chasing a broken-momentum cyclical because it's cheap is how screens lose money. We want it on our terms:
- Triggers (either one): a flush toward ~$14 (roughly 12% below the 200-DMA, ~5.9× 2026E) with gold stable — that's a price where the bear case is largely paid for; or a Q2 print (2026-08-06) that beats and holds — ramp intact, margin ≥55%, no new equity — with the stock reclaiming the 50-DMA (~$17.2).
- Sizing if triggered: satellite, ≤1–2% of the flagship — a 1.95-beta, single-commodity, single-country small cap is never a core anchor regardless of multiple.
- Monitoring: re-underwrite on the §10 tripwires; formal re-score at each print (next 2026-08-06). This verdict is logged as a tracked Synthos call as of 2026-07-06 at $15.98.
- Single biggest risk: the gold price — everything else is a footnote to it.
Provenance & disclosures
- Traceability: 0 KB claims, 0 expert voices — no expert-panel coverage; this note is fundamentals-driven off the FMP data pull (profile, filings, estimates, technicals). No conviction score is assigned because there is nothing to aggregate; fabricated conviction is structurally impossible (claim-ID reconciliation).
- Data as-of: fundamentals 2026-03-31 (Q1 2026, filed 2026-05-06) · estimates & prices 2026-07-06 · KB claims: none. Forward figures are analyst consensus (FMP), labeled as estimates; out-year coverage is thin (1–3 analysts).
- Ticker-recycling contamination (material caveat): the
seg_prod(2021–22 "Produced Water Handling / Water Solutions") and the entire insider-transaction block in this pull belong to Aris Water Solutions (CIK 0001865187), a different issuer that previously traded as ARIS — both were excluded from the analysis. The profile'slastDividend 0.525conflicts with a TTM dividend yield of 0 and zero dividends in the cash-flow statement; we treat the dividend as zero. - Minor data discrepancies: the quote block's 52-wk high ($23.29) differs from the technical block's ($22.68 — used for technicals); the earnings calendar's Q1'26 revenue actual ($364.0M) differs from the filed income statement ($372.5M — the filing is used).
- Missing fields, stated honestly: no geographic revenue split, no ounce production / AISC / reserve data, no management guidance, and no valid insider data are present in this pull.
- Valuation caveat: our base case applies an ~8.5× multiple to 2026E EPS — a deliberate haircut to peak-cycle gold earnings; FMP's own DCF score (1/5) flags the same sensitivity. The Street's $23.29 is shown as context, not adopted.
- 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").