Silver Mining Stocks Compared (2026)

Comparison as of 19 August 2026. A point-in-time snapshot, not an evergreen guide. Fundamentals come from each company’s fiscal-2025 annual filing — a 10-K, Annual Report or Annual Information Form — and its most recent disclosed results; market data (prices, market caps, multiples, analyst targets) is drawn from the five underlying analyses, which were struck across a short window: Pan American and Hecla at the 6 Aug 2026 close, Fresnillo at the 9 Aug London close, Coeur and First Majestic at the 10 Aug close — so per-company price dates differ by a few trading days and each is shown in its own cell. Price deck: one shared deck for every column — the fixed silver grid, the five US$500-and-US$15 rungs US$30 / 45 / 60 / 75 / 90 per oz, with the base rung US$60/oz sitting near the ~US$63–66 spot, and gold context ~US$4,350/oz. The five underlying analyses were each struck on their own silver base (US$38–50) and their own gold base (US$3,200–4,000), which is why the shared-deck sensitivity grid in Section 3.2 is only partly populated (Table 8 ledger). FX: four of the five report and trade in US dollars; Fresnillo reports in US dollars but trades in London in pence, converted at US$1.34/£ for its per-share and market-cap figures — the one FX assumption in this post, recorded in Table 8. Ratings (producer archetype-weighted composite, to one decimal): Hecla 4.2/5 · Fresnillo 4.2/5 · Coeur 3.9/5 · Pan American 3.3/5 · First Majestic 2.9/5 — all five recompute exactly to their published figures (Fresnillo’s analysis was re-aligned to the standard producer weighting when it joined this set), so no rating is re-rated here. Value reads (base case): Hecla and Pan American Fairly valued; Coeur Modestly overvalued; Fresnillo and First Majestic Overvalued — not one reads as undervalued, because every one is priced for silver and gold holding near their spike. The primary yardstick is P/NAV, cross-read against implied return to each company’s own base-case fair value. The two findings no single-name post could make: quality and value run broadly in the same direction here — the highest-rated name (Hecla) is also the least overvalued, so the frontier still collapses to a single name (Hecla) with no quality-versus-price trade-off to weigh (Section 5); the one inversion is Fresnillo, which ties Hecla on quality yet is Overvalued because it is priced for a permanently high silver-and-gold deck; and the whole group trades at a premium to conservative NAV — not one of the five is cheap on a through-cycle deck (Section 3). Every basis difference is consolidated in the comparability ledger, Table 8. Update cadence: refreshed when the underlying analyses are refreshed. For information only, prepared with AI assistance — see the disclaimer at the end.

Five silver mining stocks, five different ways to own the same bull market. One is the world’s largest primary silver miner — eight Mexican mines, net cash, and a record year behind it — yet priced as though silver and gold stay at their highs forever. One mines silver at a negative cash cost in Alaska and carries the strongest balance sheet in its 134-year history. One is the largest listed silver producer in the Americas, yet earns most of its money from gold and holds two giant silver mines it is not allowed to dig. One just bought its way to seven mines across the safest jurisdictions in mining and turned on its first-ever dividend. And one is the highest-cost and highest-beta of the group — the sharpest instrument in both directions, priced as though US$66 silver is permanent. This post puts all five on one construction — one date, one currency basis (US dollars; Fresnillo converted from pence), one shared silver deck, one nine-point scorecard — and produces two findings no single-name post could: quality and price point broadly the same way in this group, so the best company is also among the least expensive relative to its own fair value and nothing is a clear bargain-for-quality (Section 5); and every one of the five trades above its own conservative net-asset value, so the choice is not “which is cheap” but “how much silver-price risk you want per dollar” (Section 3.2). To screen these five and every other listed silver and gold producer on the same fields, go to Metal Pilot.

1. The peer group

The peers and the inclusion rule. The five large, listed, silver-led precious-metals producers with a published Metal Pilot single-name analysis as of August 2026: Fresnillo, Pan American Silver, Coeur Mining, Hecla Mining and First Majestic Silver. The boundary is silver-led producer/operator with a published analysis, valued in US dollars — Fresnillo joins the group now that its analysis exists; it reports in US dollars but trades in London in pence, the single FX conversion in this post (Table 8). Wheaton Precious Metals remains absent on archetype: it is a royalty-and-streaming company, not a mining operator, and belongs to the Precious Metals Royalty Companies Compared peer group, not this one. The five here are ordered by market capitalisation in US dollars, largest first — which puts Fresnillo alone at the top (~US$28 bn), then Pan American and Coeur (both ~US$19–20 bn), then Hecla and First Majestic (both ~US$9–10 bn). Before trusting a single number in Table 1, read the comparability ledger in Section 6.1 (Table 8) — every place a company’s basis differs from this post’s construction is recorded there once, with the direction of the bias, rather than scattered through footnotes. For the market backdrop these five operate in, see the Silver — A Complete Market Guide ; this post is the quality-and-value companion to those single-name analyses, not a substitute for them.

Table 1. The five compared, headline figures

The silver-AISC construction, applied where each company reports it: each cost cell is that company’s own most recent all-in sustaining cost on the basis its filing publishes, net of by-product credits where stated. The five are not on one denominator — Pan American reports a silver-segment AISC net of by-products, Hecla a consolidated silver AISC by-product and excluding the ramping Keno Hill, First Majestic a consolidated AISC per payable silver-equivalent ounce (co-product-style, so gold and base metals raise rather than credit the number), Coeur reports on a gold-equivalent basis as a gold-primary producer and publishes no clean silver AISC, and Fresnillo discloses AISC per mine on a silver-equivalent basis, not a single group by-product silver AISC — so it too is n/d here for a like-for-like column, though its ~61% 2025 EBITDA margin marks it a low-cost operator. The differences are large and are recorded in the ledger (Table 8); the cost figure is read directionally, not as a like-for-like ranking.

Source: each company’s FY2025 annual filing as analysed in the five underlying posts linked in Section 6.1; market data per those posts — Pan American and Hecla at the 6 Aug 2026 close, Fresnillo at the 9 Aug London close, Coeur and First Majestic at the 10 Aug close. Four of the five report and trade in US dollars; Fresnillo reports in US dollars but trades in pence, converted at US$1.34/£ for its price and market cap — the only FX in this table (Table 8). Silver production, reserves and reserve life are the pure-silver figures (First Majestic’s 185 Moz silver-equivalent reserve contains 101 Moz of silver, used here for the per-dollar rows; Coeur’s 2026 silver line is pro-forma post-New-Gold guidance, not a 2025 actual; Fresnillo’s 48.7 Moz includes the Silverstream contract and its 363 Moz reserve is attributable — Table 8). Per-dollar rows divide the silver figure by the market capitalisation struck at each company’s own price date and move with it. Reserves are 2P (proven and probable) under NI 43-101/CIM (Pan American, First Majestic), JORC (Fresnillo), S-K 1300 (Coeur) and the US SEC standard (Hecla); classification, code and effective date are carried in each underlying analysis. Quality ratings are recomputed here on the producer archetype weighting (Section 4); value reads and P/NAV are as published in each underlying analysis.

Three structural facts recur in every section below. First, the group runs about 3 to 1 on market capitalisation but the size order is not the silver order: Fresnillo is the biggest company and the biggest silver producer (48.7 Moz), but per dollar of market value it is mid-pack, and Hecla and First Majestic — a third its size — buy more silver per dollar than it does. Second, three of the five are, at the margin, as much gold as silver: Fresnillo earns nearly half its revenue from gold, Pan American most of its money from gold, and Coeur is a gold-primary producer that reports in gold-equivalent ounces — so the silver-only rows understate all three, and the gold-context row exists to say so. Third, the cost column spans a factor of nearly five — from Hecla’s ~US$6/oz to First Majestic’s ~US$28/AgEq oz — and that spread, more than scale or jurisdiction, is what separates the durable from the marginal when silver reverts.

2. Operating and financial position

2.1 Company by company

Fresnillo is the largest name here at US$28.3 billion and the world’s largest primary silver producer — eight mines across four Mexican districts, producing 48.7 Moz of silver and 600 koz of gold in 2025. Its single-name analysis shows 363 Moz of 2P silver reserves (grown 9.4% in 2025, replacing more than it mined), net cash of US$1.92 billion and a ~61% EBITDA margin — the deepest scale and one of the strongest balance sheets in the group, anchored by the tier-one Fresnillo, Saucito and Juanicipio silver mines. Nearly half its revenue is gold (Herradura is the single biggest earner). The structural fact that separates it: Fresnillo is 74.99%-owned by Industrias Peñoles and 100% concentrated in Mexico — a controlled-company, single-country profile none of the other four carries, and the reason its top-tier operating quality still trades with a jurisdiction-and-governance discount and, after a record 2025, at ~1.5× its own NAV.

Pan American Silver is second at US$20.2 billion, the leading silver producer in the Americas with twelve mines across the region, and — the fact that reframes it — a company that earns most of its revenue from gold. Its single-name analysis carries the group’s deepest silver inventory by a wide margin: 452 Moz of 2P silver reserves and over 1.13 billion ounces of measured-and-indicated silver resource, plus 6.3 Moz of gold, against 2025 output of 22.8 Moz silver and 742 koz gold. Its silver-segment AISC of ~US$17/oz is middling, and its jurisdiction mix — Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Guatemala — is the riskiest in the group. The structural fact that separates it: Pan American is the only company here carrying giant stranded silver optionality — the suspended Escobal mine in Guatemala and the banned Navidad deposit in Argentina, each potentially transformational, each stuck for years on political and Indigenous-consultation issues the company cannot move.

Coeur Mining sits third at US$18.8 billion after the March 2026 New Gold acquisition, and it is the odd one out on metal: an all-North-American, gold-primary producer that happens to be a top-five silver miner. Its analysis shows seven mines across the US, Canada and Mexico producing ~1.25 Moz of gold-equivalent ounces — roughly 690 koz gold, 20 Moz silver and 45 Mlb copper — against 7.4 Moz of gold and 280 Moz of silver in pro-forma 2P reserves. It is unhedged, net cash, and its cost curve bends down into 2027 as New Afton’s copper credits arrive. The structural fact that separates it: Coeur bought its scale rather than built it — its share count went from ~343 m to ~1,034 m in three years, so the growth in Table 1 is real but paid for in paper, and its silver figures are a minority of a business the market values chiefly on gold.

Hecla Mining is fourth at US$9.7 billion and is the purest, highest-quality expression of the group: the largest US-based primary silver producer, in tier-one jurisdictions, with a flagship that mines silver at a negative cash cost. Its analysis shows three silver mines — Greens Creek (Alaska), Lucky Friday (Idaho) and the ramping Keno Hill (Yukon) — producing 17.0 Moz silver in 2025 at a consolidated AISC of ~US$6/oz ex-Keno, against 231 Moz of 2P silver reserves on a ~14-year life. It is effectively debt-free with US$483 m of cash, is divesting Casa Berardi to become a pure-play, and buys the most silver per dollar of market value in the group on both production and reserves. The structural fact that separates it: Hecla is the only company here whose entire footprint sits in the US and Canada — a jurisdictional profile the other three cannot match.

First Majestic Silver is fifth at US$9.3 billion and is the group’s high-beta specialist: the most silver-led and highest-cost of the five, and the sharpest instrument in both directions. Its analysis shows four mines — San Dimas, Santa Elena, La Encantada and the 70%-held Los Gatos, all in Mexico — plus the idled Jerritt Canyon gold complex in Nevada and the First Mint bullion business, producing 15.4 Moz silver (31.1 Moz AgEq) in 2025 at a consolidated AISC of US$27.69–28.77 per AgEq ounce, the highest in the group. It holds only 101 Moz of pure-silver 2P reserves on a ~6-year life — the shortest here — and grew Los Gatos by acquisition at ~29% annual dilution. The structural fact that separates it: First Majestic has both the highest silver beta (2.11) and the highest cost base, so its net asset value swings ~30% for every 10% move in silver — more than any peer, which is exactly why the market has bid it to the richest P/NAV in the group.

2.2 Silver production

Figure 1. Silver production, absolute and per dollar of market value

Figure data: Table 1, this analysis. The two series carry different units, so each is scaled to its own maximum — bar lengths compare within a series, not across the two, and every bar prints its true value. Rows are in the post’s market-cap order. Coeur’s ~13 Moz is a 2025 legacy figure and its silver is a minority co-product of a gold-primary business; per-dollar figures are computed at each company’s own price date and move with it (Table 8).

The two series still disagree, and Fresnillo is the one name where they largely agree. Fresnillo produces the most silver by far — 48.7 Moz, more than double Pan American — and, unusually for the biggest company in a group, it also screens near the top per dollar at 1.72 Moz, a whisker behind Hecla’s group-leading 1.75 Moz. The two mid-cap seniors are where the flip bites: Pan American buys just 1.13 Moz per US$1 bn and Coeur only 0.69, the two lowest, while First Majestic (1.66) buys nearly as much per dollar as Fresnillo despite being a third its size. So the size order (Fresnillo, Pan American, Coeur, Hecla, First Majestic) and the per-dollar order (Hecla, Fresnillo, First Majestic, Pan American, Coeur) agree only at the very top and cross everywhere below it. Whether that is a discount worth having is Section 3’s question — but the direction is clear, and it points the same way the reserve figure does below.

2.3 Silver reserves

Figure 2. 2P silver reserves, absolute and per dollar of market value

Figure data: Table 1, this analysis. Each series is scaled to its own maximum; bar lengths compare within a series only, and every bar prints its true value. Rows are in the post’s market-cap order. First Majestic’s 101 Moz is the pure-silver reserve — its headline 185 Moz figure is silver-equivalent, which folds in gold and base metals; using the pure-silver figure keeps the row on one metal across all five (Table 8). Pan American’s 452 Moz includes the suspended Escobal reserve; Coeur’s 280 Moz is pro forma post-New-Gold.

Hecla leads the per-dollar read again, and Fresnillo is the reserve figure’s clearest big-but-not-cheap case. Pan American holds 452 Moz of 2P silver and Fresnillo 363 Moz — the two deepest inventories — yet per US$1 bn of market value Pan American buys 22.4 Moz and Fresnillo just 12.8 Moz, fourth of the five, because its US$28 bn market cap is spread across silver and a large gold book. Hecla again leads at 23.8 Moz per dollar and First Majestic’s 10.9 Moz is less than half Hecla’s, the widest per-dollar spread in the reserve figure. The absolute order runs Pan American, Fresnillo, Coeur, Hecla, First Majestic; the per-dollar order runs Hecla, Pan American, Coeur, Fresnillo, First Majestic — Fresnillo drops from second on depth to fourth on value. The honest caveat is that a reserve ounce is not a produced ounce: Pan American’s deepest-in-class inventory partly sits in Escobal, which it cannot mine; Fresnillo’s 363 Moz is high-quality and growing but priced richly per dollar; and First Majestic’s short 101 Moz leans on continual resource conversion rather than depth — so the row says what a dollar buys in the ground, which the reserve-life column then qualifies.

2.4 Operating costs

The cost construction, and why it is read directionally. For an operating silver miner, unit cost is the dimension that separates the durable from the marginal when the metal reverts — the opposite of the royalty comparison, where margin is ~90% by design. But the five here do not disclose cost on one denominator, so the figure below is read for its shape, not as a like-for-like ranking. Restated: each bar is that company’s most recent all-in sustaining cost on its own reported basis — Pan American’s silver-segment AISC net of by-products (~US$17/oz), Hecla’s consolidated silver AISC by-product and excluding the ramping Keno Hill (~US$6/oz), and First Majestic’s consolidated AISC per payable silver-equivalent ounce (US$27.69–28.77), which is a co-product-style number that adds gold and base-metal costs into the denominator rather than crediting them. Two names are excluded from the figure: Coeur reports on a gold-equivalent basis as a gold-primary producer and publishes no clean silver AISC, and Fresnillo discloses AISC per mine on a silver-equivalent basis with no single group by-product figure — so a bar for either would be a different object, though Fresnillo’s ~61% 2025 EBITDA margin marks it low-cost. All deviations are in the ledger (Table 8).

Figure 3. Silver all-in sustaining cost (three of five; Coeur and Fresnillo report on non-comparable bases)

Figure data: Table 1, this analysis. Rows are in the post’s market-cap order; bars scale to the highest value in the set (First Majestic, ~US$28), so a shorter bar is a lower cost and the leader mark goes to the lowest (Hecla) in place. The three are not on one denominator — Hecla’s is a by-product silver AISC excluding Keno Hill, Pan American’s a silver-segment AISC net of by-products, First Majestic’s a consolidated AISC per silver-equivalent ounce that raises rather than credits the number (Table 8). Coeur and Fresnillo are excluded and named in the caption. Read the spread, not the exact ranking.

The cost curve is where this group genuinely separates, and it separates by a factor of nearly five. Hecla’s ~US$6/oz — driven by Greens Creek, which mines silver at a negative cash cost once gold, zinc and lead credits are netted — is among the lowest of any primary silver producer on earth. Pan American’s ~US$17/oz is healthy at today’s price but middling on the curve. First Majestic’s ~US$28/AgEq oz is the highest in the group, and even allowing for the silver-equivalent denominator inflating it, it is a genuinely high-cost operation — comfortable at US$66 silver, thin through the cycle. That spread is the single most important number in this comparison for what happens if silver reverts: at a US$30 through-cycle deck, Hecla’s flagship still clears cost with room to spare while First Majestic’s mines barely break even, which is exactly why the two sit at opposite ends of the scorecard’s cost dimension (Section 4) and the widest ends of the bear-case value range (Section 3.2). Fresnillo, off the figure for want of a comparable group figure, sits at the low-cost end alongside Hecla on margin — its ~61% 2025 EBITDA margin is second only to Hecla’s economics — so on cost it is a durable name, not a marginal one.

2.5 The three metrics side by side

Figure 4. Where each company sits on all three metrics

Figure data: Table 1, this analysis. Shading is ranked within each column separately, never across the grid — the three metrics carry different units, so a level 9 means “the best value in this column,” and for the cost column lower is better, so Hecla’s ~US$6 is the highest level. Rows are in the post’s market-cap order. Coeur’s and Fresnillo’s cost cells are n/d — a neutral card, not a low value — because Coeur reports on a gold-equivalent basis and Fresnillo per mine on a silver-equivalent basis, neither disclosing a comparable group silver AISC.

Hecla leads all three columns — the only clean sweep in the grid — and the three largest companies lead none. That is the sharpest form of the pattern running through the whole section: scale and per-dollar value are different questions, and here the smaller, cleaner operator wins every scale-adjusted measure. Fresnillo, the biggest company, is strong on production-per-dollar (second only to Hecla) but only mid-low on reserves-per-dollar and off-figure on cost — the scale it brings to the absolute rows does not carry into the per-dollar ones. First Majestic is last on both reserves-per-dollar and cost; Pan American sits second on reserves-per-dollar but low on production-per-dollar and mid on cost; Coeur is undisclosed on cost and mid-table on the two it discloses. Leading a column is a statement about that column and nothing more — the verdict is Section 5’s job — but a reader who assumed the three big-cap names would win on scale-adjusted quality should note that they win nothing here; the smallest name (Hecla) wins everything.

The five sort into four shapes, and the thing that separates them is metal mix and cost. One low-cost mega-scale name in a class of its own (Fresnillo): the biggest company and biggest silver producer, deepest-but-one reserve, net cash and low cost — held back only by its single-country, controlled-company profile and its rich price. One low-cost pure-play (Hecla): a negative-cost flagship, the best per-dollar silver in the group, and the only all-US-and-Canada footprint. Two gold-heavy silver names (Pan American, Coeur): both roughly half or more of their value in gold, both ~US$19–20 bn, both scale leaders whose silver-only rows understate them — Pan American the deepest silver reserve with the worst jurisdiction, Coeur the newest and most gold-primary after New Gold. One high-cost high-beta specialist (First Majestic): the most silver-led, the highest cost, the shortest reserve life, and the sharpest leverage to the metal in either direction. Carry three facts into Section 3. The group runs about 3 to 1 on market capitalisation and 4.5 to 1 on silver reserves, but the size order and the per-dollar order disagree almost everywhere below the top. Reserve life runs from ~6 years (First Majestic) to ~14 (Hecla, Pan American), with Fresnillo at ~8 — a duration spread that matters enormously when the whole group is priced for a metal near its highs. And three of the five are not purely silver companies — Fresnillo earns nearly half its revenue from gold, Pan American most of its money from gold, and Coeur reports in gold-equivalent ounces — so a pure-silver reading flatters none of the three.

2.6 Balance sheets and capital returns

All five carry net cash, which is the section’s first and least discriminating finding. Every one of the five is net cash into the silver bull market — a genuine, unusual similarity for a mining peer group, and a dimension that does almost no work in separating them (Section 4 flags it). Fresnillo carries the largest cash pile of all at US$1.92 bn. What differs is the quality of the balance sheet behind the net-cash line, the record of capital allocation that built it, and the dilution each shareholder absorbed along the way.

Table 2. Balance sheet, credit and capital returns

Source: each company’s FY2025 annual filing and most recent disclosed results, as analysed in the five underlying posts linked in Section 6.1. Net cash and enterprise value are already in Table 1 and are not repeated as separate rows here. Leverage is on each company’s own reported basis; all five are net cash or effectively debt-free, so the row discriminates little (Section 4). Free cash flow is read from each underlying analysis, not recomputed; every one is currently strong, but four of the five (Fresnillo, Pan American, Coeur, First Majestic) note that it is flattered by near-spot metal prices. The claims-ahead-of-the-common row is where the group differs structurally: only First Majestic carries an instrument ranking ahead of the common — US$350 m of 2031 convertible notes, currently out of the money at a ~US$22.36 conversion price and bridged as debt at face — while the other four carry nothing above the common.

Figure 5. Share-count change — the honest denominator on every per-share claim

Figure data: Table 2, this analysis. Rows are in the post’s market-cap order. Bar lengths are an illustrative ordering of dilution magnitude, not one numeric scale — the five disclose share-count change over different windows (Coeur and First Majestic quantified; Fresnillo, Pan American and Hecla qualitative), so the bars indicate the severity a reader should weigh, and every bar prints what it actually represents (Table 8). Lower is better; the leader mark is on the least-dilutive name (Fresnillo) in place.

The net-cash column is unanimous; the dilution column is where capital allocation is actually earned. Every one of the five would clear its debt out of its cash balance today, and stress-tested at the low end of Section 3’s silver ladder — US$30/oz — none faces a solvency question, because none carries meaningful leverage and only First Majestic carries anything above the common (its out-of-the-money 2031 converts). What separates them is the price shareholders paid for scale. Coeur roughly tripled its share count in three years funding New Gold and its predecessors with paper, and First Majestic issued ~29% more shares in a single year for Los Gatos and its convertible war-chest — so both companies’ headline growth is partly bought, not built, and per-share value creation is the weakest in the group. Fresnillo’s and Hecla’s share counts are the most stable — Fresnillo has issued essentially no equity (its Peñoles parent funds growth from cash flow, and the 2026 Probe Gold deal was all-cash), and Hecla’s dilution is modest — while Pan American’s is historic (Tahoe, Yamana, MAG) and now behind it. The capital-return policies read richer than they are: Coeur’s US$750 m buyback and inaugural dividend and Pan American’s US$1 bn program are real, but both were switched on only after the dilution, and Hecla scrapped its silver-linked dividend entirely — so the buyback-and-dividend story is younger and less tested here than the net-cash line suggests.

2.7 Hedging and price-risk exposure

All five are structurally unhedged on the silver price, by design and without exception. That row is unanimous and therefore discriminates nothing — a silver miner exists to give shareholders undiluted leverage to the metal, and every one of these five says so in its filings (Fresnillo hedges only currency and project capex, never the metal). What differs is which metal drives the equity, the jurisdiction the cash flow sits in, and the one named risk that would break each thesis.

Table 3. Price-risk position

Source: each company’s FY2025 annual filing derivative and market-risk disclosures, as analysed in the five underlying posts linked in Section 6.1. Metal mixes are not on one denominator and are read from each underlying analysis (Table 8). Coverage percentages are not compared, because none of the five hedges metal volume — the exposure difference is about metal mix and jurisdiction, not hedge cover.

Metal mix is the real price-risk differentiator, and it splits the group. Hecla and First Majestic are essentially pure silver bets — Hecla the low-cost, low-risk version, First Majestic the high-cost, high-beta one — so both move almost entirely with the silver price. Fresnillo, Pan American and Coeur are, at the margin, part-gold: nearly half of Fresnillo’s revenue, roughly half of Pan American’s value and the majority of Coeur’s ride on gold, which means a silver reversion hurts them less than it hurts the two pure-plays, and a gold move helps them more. That difference is the single most important thing to carry into the sensitivity work in Section 3.2, where the silver-only deck grid understates all three precisely because their gold leg is held flat.

Jurisdiction is the price risk none of the five hedges and all of them disclose. Hecla’s 100% US-and-Canada footprint is the best in the group and the cleanest counter to a resource-nationalism shock; at the other end, Pan American’s five-country Latin American spread and Fresnillo’s 100%-Mexico concentration are the worst — Pan American compounded by two stranded assets (Escobal and Navidad, the sector’s poster children for political risk), Fresnillo by having every one of its eight producing mines under a single, tightening Mexican regime. First Majestic’s four-of-five-in-Mexico concentration sits alongside them, exposed to the same mining-law and security risk. The named risk most likely to break each thesis, from each company’s own register: for Fresnillo, that record silver and gold mean-revert while it stays 100% Mexico-bound and 75% controlled; for Pan American, that US$63 silver is a spike that mean-reverts while its optionality stays stranded; for Coeur, that the New Gold integration stumbles; for Hecla, a slow Keno Hill ramp or a Greens Creek disruption; for First Majestic, its high cost base amplifying a silver reversion. All five are, in the end, largely the same risk — the metal price — wearing different amounts of cost and jurisdiction on top.

3. Asset value

3.1 What the market pays

The primary yardstick here is price to net asset value, and every one of the five trades above it. Each underlying analysis builds a sum-of-the-parts NAV per share at its own base deck and publishes the resulting P/NAV, so a single column is comparable to a first order — with one caveat that matters: each NAV is struck on that company’s own silver and gold base deck (silver US$38–50, gold US$3,200–4,000), not one shared deck, so the P/NAV levels are read as “price against a conservative floor” rather than as a perfectly like-for-like multiple (Table 8). The supporting read is the implied return to each company’s own blended base-case fair value, which is what each five-point value read is actually measured against, and — because it folds in each company’s own target multiple and metal mix — is the axis the dominance screen uses in Section 5.

Table 4. Value against the yardstick

Source: Section 7 of each of the five underlying posts (Section 6.1), at each company’s own price date. The five NAVs are not on one shared deck — Fresnillo’s is struck at US$45/oz silver and US$4,000 gold, Pan American’s at US$48 silver and US$3,500 gold, Coeur’s at US$50 silver and US$4,000 gold, Hecla’s at US$38 silver (a 1.0× intrinsic NAV before its ~1.6× silver-producer premium), First Majestic’s at US$50 silver and US$3,500 gold (Table 8) — so P/NAV is comparable directionally, not identically. Fresnillo’s per-share figures are converted from pence at US$1.34/£. Hecla’s 1.64× and its “fairly valued” read reflect a silver-producer premium the market reliably awards, so its 1.0× intrinsic NAV of US$8.81 lifts to a ~US$14.10 fair value; the other three compare price to a NAV that already sits closer to their fair value. The implied-return row is price against each post’s blended base-case fair value and is the axis Section 5’s dominance screen uses. Every P/NAV and value read is a ratio of a dated price to a modelled value and moves with both.

Figure 6. Price to net asset value, against the 1.0× parity line

Figure data: Table 4, this analysis. Rows are in the post’s market-cap order; the leader mark is on the cheapest ratio (Coeur, 1.25×) in place. Bars scale to the dearest name (First Majestic, 1.93×); the dashed marker is 1.0× parity, at 1.0 ÷ 1.93 of the scale, the same denominator every bar length uses. No bar reaches the parity line — every one of the five trades above its own conservative NAV, which is the normal shape for a producer priced into a metal bull market and the subject of Section 3.2. Each NAV is struck on that company’s own base deck (Table 8), so the ratio is directional.

On P/NAV the ordering does not match either the size ranking or the quality ranking — and that divergence is the section’s finding. Coeur is the cheapest name at 1.25× its NAV, a full turn below First Majestic’s 1.93× — and yet Coeur is a gold-primary company whose “cheapness” here is partly its lower metal beta and partly a NAV struck on a US$4,000 gold base well below spot. Fresnillo screens second-cheapest at 1.50×, but that is misleading in the opposite direction: its implied return to fair value is −22% (fourth of five), because its NAV is struck on a base deck (silver US$45, gold US$4,000) that already sits below spot, so a modest P/NAV still leaves a wide discount to where it trades. Hecla’s 1.64× looks middling but is the premium the market reliably pays for the group’s best operator, so its implied return to fair value is the smallest at −2%. Pan American at 1.74× and First Majestic at 1.93× are the two dearest on raw NAV. The trap in this column is that “cheapest on P/NAV” (Coeur, then Fresnillo) and “least overvalued against its own fair value” (Hecla) are different names — because a P/NAV multiple compares price to a floor NAV, while the implied-return column folds in each company’s own target multiple, base deck and metal mix. Section 5 reads the two together rather than picking one, but the headline is already visible: not one of the five reaches 1.0× parity, so on any conservative through-cycle deck the whole group is priced at a premium, and the question is not “which is cheap” but “which premium is worth paying.”

3.2 Price sensitivity

The single-name analyses each publish a NAV-per-share grid, but on different silver ranges and gold decks, so this section builds the one figure they share only in part: the peer group against the fixed silver ladder. This is where the group’s mixed metal exposure bites. Pan American published NAV/share across exactly the fixed rungs (silver US$30/45/60/75/90, gold held at US$3,500); Fresnillo published a silver grid on US$15–75 (its own base US$45) that overlaps the shared ladder at US$30–75, so four of its five cells populate and US$90 is n/d — with the caveat that Fresnillo’s model co-moves gold with silver rather than holding it flat, so its high-silver cells are lifted relative to the gold-flat rows (Table 8); Hecla and First Majestic published narrower silver ranges that reach only part of the ladder; and Coeur sensitises gold, not silver — as a gold-primary producer its own grid holds silver flat at US$50 and flexes gold US$3,200–4,800, so it has no silver-deck row and is handled in prose below. The result is a deliberately partial grid: cells are filled only from published model outputs (interpolated between two published points where a rung falls between them), and every gap prints n/d rather than an imputed number.

Figure 7. NAV per share across the shared silver ladder (four of five; Coeur is gold-driven)

Figure data: each company’s own NAV/share silver-sensitivity grid at the 5% base discount rate, from the underlying posts (Section 6.1). Shading is ranked within each row, not across the grid — each row is scaled on its own minimum and maximum, so a level shows that company’s own deck sensitivity, not a cross-company magnitude (a Pan American NAV/share is not comparable in level to a Hecla intrinsic NAV/share). Columns are the fixed Table 3b silver grid; the US$60 base column is outlined. Cells are filled only from published model outputs — Fresnillo’s US$30/45/60/75 are from its own grid (base US$45, converted from pence at US$1.34/£) and its US$90 is n/d beyond that grid; Pan American published the exact rungs; Hecla’s US$30 and US$45 are interpolated between its published US$28/US$32 and US$44/US$50 points, and its US$60–90 are n/d because its grid stops at US$50; First Majestic’s US$45 and US$60 are published, its US$30/US$75/US$90 are n/d outside its US$40–60 range. Hecla’s row is a 1.0× intrinsic NAV before its ~1.6× silver-producer premium; Pan American and First Majestic hold gold at US$3,500, so both understate the gold-lifted case, while Fresnillo’s model co-moves gold with silver, so its high-silver cells are lifted and are not on the gold-flat basis of the other rows (Table 8). Coeur is excluded — it is gold-driven and publishes no silver grid. Share prices for the crossover read: Fresnillo US$38.38, Pan American US$48.05, Hecla US$14.43, First Majestic US$18.85, each at its Table 1 date.

The crossover read is near-uniform and it is “never” on a like-for-like basis — and that is the finding this grid delivers even half-empty. Pan American’s NAV/share tops out at US$42.19 even at US$90 silver — still below its US$48.05 price — because its gold segment, held flat at US$3,500 here, is its largest value component and the silver column cannot flex it; so on silver alone Pan American never reaches its price, and its true sensitivity is understated. Hecla’s 1.0× intrinsic NAV reaches only ~US$10.49 at US$45 silver against a US$14.43 price — the gap is the silver-producer premium the market awards its quality, and it never closes on intrinsic NAV. First Majestic reaches US$15.90 at US$60 silver against US$18.85 — closest to its price of the silver-flat rows, and the row that would climb fastest above US$60 given its beta, but its own grid stops there. Fresnillo is the apparent exception, but only because its grid co-moves gold: at the shared US$60 rung it shows ~US$38 against a US$38.38 price and at US$75 it clears it — yet that is silver and gold both rising, not silver alone; on Fresnillo’s own gold-flat base (US$45 silver = US$25.6 NAV/share) it sits far below its US$38.38 price, exactly like the others. The like-for-like result — every silver-led name trading above its conservative NAV at every populated rung once gold is held flat — is the same conclusion Section 3.1’s parity line reached, now shown across the price ladder: this group is not priced for a silver reversion at any rung it discloses. Coeur, the excluded name, tells the same story on its own axis: its NAV/share runs US$9.30 to US$19.70 across gold US$3,200–4,800 (silver held at US$50), and its US$18.15 price sits around the +10% gold column (~US$4,400) — i.e. the market is capitalising Coeur at a gold price a touch above today’s spot, not at a discount. Five names, five ways of saying the same thing: the premium is to the metal price, not to intrinsic value.

4. Rating Scoreboard

All five are scored on the Metal Pilot Company Scorecard: the same nine dimensions, the same 1–5 anchors, the same band definitions. The compared companies are the peer set for this post, and with Fresnillo now included that set is complete — the global primary-silver group the single-name analyses each benchmark against. The limitation the earlier four-name version had to flag — that every analysis scored its relative dimensions against a wider bar that included Fresnillo, absent from the table — is now resolved: the largest primary silver miner is in the group it was always measured against. Fresnillo’s own analysis was re-aligned to the standard producer weighting (the five dominant dimensions — asset quality, cost, reserves, balance sheet and capital allocation — at 15% each, the four base dimensions at 6.25%) when it joined this set, which lifted its published composite from 4.1 to 4.2/5; no other rating is re-scored, and every relative star holds because adding Fresnillo completes the bar rather than moving any subject’s position on a Table 1 metric.

Table 5. The nine-dimension scorecard, five companies

All five are the producer/operator archetype, so all five carry the same weighting: asset quality, cost, reserves and life, balance sheet, and capital allocation are the dominant dimensions at 15% each; the remaining four — growth, management, jurisdiction, ESG — carry base weight at 6.25% each. No dimension is not-applicable for this archetype. Rows are ordered by weight descending, not by the scorecard’s own dimension order. The dimension numbers are not printed: reordering by weight puts them out of sequence, and a column reading 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 4, 7, 8, 9 reads as an error rather than as a deliberate ordering.

Source: the Metal Pilot Company Scorecard, as applied in the five underlying analyses linked in Section 6.1, where every star is substantiated with a sourced figure. This table is the scorecard’s only artifact — it already prints a numeral per company per dimension in a grid, so a shaded heat-map of the same values would add one colour channel and repeat all forty-five numbers. Composites are Σ(weight × score), reproducible on sight: Fresnillo 0.15×(5+4+5+5+4) + 0.0625×(3+3+2+4) = 3.45 + 0.75 = 4.20 → 4.2/5; Hecla 0.15×(4+5+4+5+3) + 0.0625×(4+4+5+3) = 3.15 + 1.00 = 4.15 → 4.2/5; First Majestic 0.15×(3+2+3+4+2) + 0.0625×(4+3+2+3) = 2.10 + 0.75 = 2.85 → 2.9/5. The band mapping (nearest half-star): ≥4.25 High quality, 3.5–4.24 Solid, 2.5–3.49 Average, below 2.5 speculative — Pan American’s 3.30 rounds to ★★★½ (Solid), First Majestic’s 2.85 to ★★★ (Average). Fresnillo (4.20) and Hecla (4.15) both display 4.2/5 — Fresnillo edges Hecla by 0.05 on the raw composite, below the scorecard’s resolution, so the two are treated as co-leaders on quality and it is value that separates them (Section 5). Four of the five composites recompute exactly to their own posts’ published figures — Pan American 3.30, Coeur 3.91, Hecla 4.15, First Majestic 2.85; Fresnillo’s re-computes to 4.20, up from the 4.13 its post first published under a non-standard four-dominant weighting, so its analysis was re-aligned to the standard producer weighting rather than footnoted here.

Cost is the widest-spread row on the board, and it is the row that decides the group. It runs 4, 3, 3, 5, 2 (Fresnillo, Pan American, Coeur, Hecla, First Majestic) — Hecla’s negative-cost Greens Creek against First Majestic’s ~US$28/AgEq oz, a three-point spread on a 15%-weight dimension, worth 0.45 of composite between top and bottom. No other dimension separates the five so sharply, and it is most of why Hecla leads the board and First Majestic trails it: the two are the same kind of company at opposite ends of the cost curve, and the scorecard prices that difference at its full weight.

Balance sheet is the near-unanimous row, and it should be flagged rather than read. It scores 5, 4, 5, 5, 4 — every one of the five is net cash or debt-free, exactly as Table 2 showed, so a dimension carrying 15% of the weighting does almost no discriminating work here. A reader who wants a sharper ranking should treat ~0.7 of every composite as a near-constant and read the cost, asset-quality and jurisdiction rows instead. That balance-sheet strength is real and it is why none of the five is a solvency risk — but in this group it is table stakes, not an edge.

Jurisdiction contradicts the size ranking, and it is the second-widest row. It runs 2, 2, 4, 5, 2 down the market-cap order — the two largest companies, Fresnillo (100% Mexico, 75%-controlled) and Pan American (five Latin American countries plus two stranded assets), score the lowest at 2, while the smaller Hecla scores the group’s only 5 on its all-US-and-Canada footprint and Coeur a 4 on a predominantly tier-1 base. Size buys neither jurisdiction quality nor cost position here; if anything the two biggest names carry the group’s worst jurisdiction, and the smaller Hecla is the cleanest name on both jurisdiction and cost.

Growth and cost trade off against each other, and First Majestic is where the trade-off is starkest. The growth row reads 3, 3, 5, 4, 4 — Coeur’s New Gold transformation earns the group’s top growth score, and First Majestic’s 4 reflects real in-house optionality (Los Gatos, Santa Elena, Jerritt, the highest silver beta) — yet First Majestic scores just 2 on both cost and capital allocation. Its optionality is genuine, but it is bought with dilution and carried on the highest cost base in the group, so the same company that offers the most silver torque offers the least margin of safety. That single tension — high optionality, low quality-of-earnings — is why First Majestic sits alone in the Average band while the other three are Solid.

The ranking is robust below the top, but the top two are weighting-sensitive — and Fresnillo is why. Recomputed as a plain unweighted mean of all nine dimensions, the order is Hecla 4.11, Coeur 4.00, Fresnillo 3.89, Pan American 3.22, First Majestic 2.89 — against the archetype-weighted order of Fresnillo 4.20, Hecla 4.15, Coeur 3.91, Pan American 3.30, First Majestic 2.85. Pan American (4th) and First Majestic (5th) hold under either scheme, but the top three reshuffle: Fresnillo leads on the archetype weighting yet slips to third on equal weights, because its profile is strong exactly where the producer archetype puts weight (asset quality, reserves, balance sheet, capital allocation) and weak on a base-weighted dimension (jurisdiction) — so heavier dominant-dimension weighting flatters it, and lifting the four base weights from 6.25% to 11.1% rewards Coeur’s growth-and-jurisdiction edge and Hecla’s all-round balance. Hecla is the robust quality leader — first or co-first under either scheme — while Fresnillo’s top billing is genuinely a function of how much this archetype rewards scale and balance-sheet strength over jurisdiction. The order is a read on the companies, but the Fresnillo–Hecla dead heat at the top is one the weighting decides.

5. Summary

The scorecard answers “how good is this company?” The valuation work in each analysis answers “how is it priced today?” Reading both together is what turns five ratings into something a reader can use — and this group produces an unusually clean answer, but the opposite clean answer to most peer groups: quality and value point the same way.

Table 6. Quality × Value, and what each verdict means

Source: the five underlying analyses linked in Section 6.1. Every value read is struck at the company’s own price date — Pan American and Hecla at 6 Aug, Fresnillo at 9 Aug, Coeur and First Majestic at 10 Aug. Quality is the archetype-weighted composite from Table 5, to one decimal; all five match the figures their own posts publish (Fresnillo re-aligned to the standard producer weighting, 4.2). Fresnillo is the one inversion in the group — it ties Hecla at the top on quality yet carries the second-worst implied return, because its NAV is struck on a base deck already below spot, so it is priced as though today’s record silver and gold hold permanently. The value reads are each underlying post’s own five-point conclusion on its blended base-case fair value; the implied-return column is the numeric return between that fair value and the price, and it is the axis the dominance screen below uses. Two names read “Fairly valued” (Pan American and Hecla) despite very different implied returns (−32% vs −2%) — because each analysis anchors “fairly valued” on being priced at spot metals, so the base-case implied return is more negative for the higher-beta, more gold-weighted Pan American; the numeric column is the like-for-like read. NAVs vary in estimate content and base deck (Table 8); rows ordered by quality, descending.

Figure 8. Quality × Value matrix

Figure data: Table 6, this analysis. The shaded band is the least-overvalued third of the value axis (implied return better than ~−15%); none of the five clears the 4.25 High-quality threshold, so all are Solid or Average. The y-axis runs 2.9 to 4.2, the observed composite range, rather than the full 1–5, so the five points are legible; every point prints its own value, so nothing is read off the axis, and the deviation is recorded in Section 6.1. Fresnillo and Hecla share the top y-position (both 4.2) but sit far apart on value — Hecla at −2% inside the shaded band, Fresnillo at −22% well left of it, the group’s one inversion. Every dot is on the same footing; the dominance screen below is an arithmetic read of these same two coordinates, not a second class of company. The value axis is implied return to each company’s own base-case fair value, not P/NAV — on raw P/NAV Coeur screens cheapest (Section 3.1), and the divergence is discussed below.

Four of the five points fall on a rising diagonal, and the fifth — Fresnillo — is the one inversion that gives the group its shape. Most comparisons in this series produce a trade-off: the cheap name is the weak one, the strong name is the dear one. Here, for four of the five, the two axes agree. Rank Hecla, Coeur, Pan American and First Majestic by quality and you have ranked them by implied return to fair value in the identical order: −2%, −16%, −32%, −41%, monotonically down — the best operator the least overvalued, the worst the most. Fresnillo breaks the line. It ties Hecla at the top on quality (4.2) yet carries a −22% implied return — more overvalued than the lower-rated Coeur — so it sits above the diagonal, top-left of where a clean quality-value line would put it. The reason is specific: Fresnillo’s NAV is struck on a base deck (silver US$45, gold US$4,000) already below spot, and unlike the pure silver plays its equity rides silver and gold, so the market has bid it as though today’s record deck in both metals holds forever. It is the group’s clearest case of quality that the price has fully claimed.

Hecla is still the only name not dominated, and even with Fresnillo’s inversion the frontier collapses to it. A company is dominated when another beats it on both quality and value at once. Hecla beats every other name on both axes — equal-or-higher quality and a smaller discount to fair value than Fresnillo, Coeur, Pan American and First Majestic alike — so the frontier is a single point. Fresnillo, despite matching Hecla’s quality, is dominated by it on value (−22% vs −2%); Coeur dominates Pan American and First Majestic; Pan American dominates First Majestic; First Majestic is dominated by everyone. The one genuine, undominated trade-off left in the group is Fresnillo versus Coeur — Fresnillo the higher quality (4.2 vs 3.9), Coeur the better value (−16% vs −22%) — neither beats the other on both, so a reader choosing between them is trading Fresnillo’s franchise quality against Coeur’s smaller discount. This is not a recommendation to buy Hecla (Section 6.2); it is the arithmetic statement that, on these two measured axes, no other name is a strictly better trade, and that a reader who prefers Fresnillo’s scale, Coeur’s discount or First Majestic’s torque is expressing a view the screen does not — on the silver price, on gold, or on a catalyst.

The one genuine complication is that “cheapest” and “best value” are different names, and the reader should hold both. On raw P/NAV, Coeur is the cheapest at 1.25× (Section 3.1) — a full turn below First Majestic — so a reader who anchors on P/NAV alone would pick Coeur, not Hecla. The reconciliation is that Coeur’s low P/NAV is partly its lower silver beta and a NAV struck on a conservative US$4,000 gold base, while Hecla’s higher P/NAV is the premium the market reliably pays for the sector’s best operator, which is why Hecla’s implied return to its own fair value is nonetheless the smallest. Neither lens is wrong; they measure different things. Coeur is the cheapest way to own North American precious-metals torque on a floor NAV; Hecla is the highest-quality name trading closest to its own fair value. The two disagree only because one metric credits Hecla’s quality premium and the other does not.

The cheap-and-weak corner belongs to First Majestic, and it gets its full treatment. First Majestic is the group’s only Average-band name and its only “Overvalued” read, sitting bottom-left on the matrix — low quality and the largest discount to fair value. That is not a bargain; it is the value-trap corner, and the trap is specific: First Majestic is the highest-cost and highest-beta name, so it offers the most silver torque and the least margin of safety, and its ~US$18.85 price embeds silver holding near US$66 permanently against a base-case fair value of ~US$11. What would have to go right is a sustained silver spike — at spot metals with an easing discount rate its own bull case reaches ~US$22 — but on any through-cycle deck its high cost base makes the −87% bear case real. A reader owns First Majestic for maximum leverage to a silver price they are confident holds and climbs; it is explicitly not a cheap or a high-quality name, and the matrix is built to say exactly that.

Table 7. Analyst consensus against this analysis

Source: market-data providers as compiled in the underlying posts (Section 6.1), at each company’s own price date; implied upside is against the price in the same row. Fresnillo is omitted from this table — its underlying analysis carries the consensus target only qualitatively (the Street’s targets “chased the shares up” through 2026), with no single compiled figure, so it is left out rather than estimated; its own analysis reads it Overvalued, consistent with the four shown. Hecla’s target range is unusually wide (roughly US$17–32), reflecting how much the Street’s silver assumption drives it, and its consensus is treated as a cross-check only. Coeur’s consensus sits near its price after the 2026 rally, consistent with a stock the market has already re-rated. Rows ordered by market cap, descending.

Every consensus target except Coeur’s sits well above the price and above this analysis’s read — and the disagreement is structural: it is about the silver deck, not company quality. The Street implies +31% to +50% on the three silver-led names; this analysis reads two of them (Pan American, Hecla) fairly valued and First Majestic overvalued on a conservative base. The entire gap is the metal assumption — each of these analyses strikes its base on a through-cycle silver deck (US$38–50) well below the ~US$63–66 spot, while the sell-side runs models nearer spot, and a silver miner’s NAV carries that difference at close to one-for-one leverage (First Majestic at ~three-for-one). Coeur is the exception that proves the point: it is the most gold-weighted name, its consensus already sits near its price, and this analysis reads it only modestly overvalued — because the gold deck it is priced against has less room above spot than the silver deck does. A reader who believes spot silver holds and rises should read toward the bull column in every one of these posts, where the same names migrate from fair-to-full back toward cheap; the consensus and this analysis do not disagree about which companies are good, only about what silver does next.

None of this is a ranking to buy the top of. The dominance screen is arithmetic on two measured axes, and even though it leaves a single name standing, that is a statement about dominance, not a personal buy: Hecla is the name no other beats on both quality and price, but a reader who wants maximum silver torque (First Majestic), the deepest reserve and a free option on a stranded mine (Pan American), or the cheapest floor-NAV multiple and gold optionality (Coeur) is choosing a different, legitimate exposure the screen does not price. Every value read here is dated to an August price against a silver price that has moved by more than the entire spread of this table inside twelve months, and the whole group re-rates together when the metal moves. To run the same nine dimensions, per-dollar metrics, costs and valuation multiples across the whole listed silver and gold universe rather than these five, explore Metal Pilot.

6. Sources, methodology & disclaimer

6.1 Sources, methodology & data vintage

This post is a synthesis of five single-company analyses published on this blog, each built from that company’s fiscal-2025 annual filing and most recent disclosed results. It contains no primary research of its own; its contribution is putting all five on one construction. The underlying analyses, with every figure sourced and every scorecard star substantiated, are:

• Fresnillo (FRES) — Stock Analysis 2026 [4.2] — recomputed here at 4.2/5 (re-aligned to the standard producer weighting)
• Pan American Silver (PAAS) — Stock Analysis 2026 [3.3] — recomputed here at 3.3/5
• Coeur Mining (CDE) — Stock Analysis 2026 [3.9] — recomputed here at 3.9/5
• Hecla Mining (HL) — Stock Analysis 2026 [4.2] — recomputed here at 4.2/5
• First Majestic Silver (AG) — Stock Analysis 2026 [2.9] — recomputed here at 2.9/5

For the market backdrop these five operate in — the structural silver bull market of solar, electrification and data-centre demand against tight supply — see the Silver — A Complete Market Guide . The sibling comparison in this series covering the asset-light way to own the same metals is Precious Metals Royalty Companies Compared . Market data, share prices, market capitalisations and analyst consensus are as compiled in the five underlying posts, at each company’s own price date (Pan American and Hecla at the 6 Aug 2026 close, Fresnillo at the 9 Aug London close, Coeur and First Majestic at the 10 Aug close). Spot silver of ~US$63–66/oz and gold of ~US$4,350/oz are as of early-to-mid August 2026, per those posts.

Every composite reconciles. Four of the five ratings were recomputed from their own published dimension scores on the producer archetype weighting and matched exactly: Pan American 3.30, Coeur 3.91, Hecla 4.15, First Majestic 2.85. Fresnillo is the one adjustment: its analysis first published a 4.13 composite under a non-standard four-dominant weighting, and on the standard producer weighting (five dominant dimensions) it recomputes to 4.20, so its source post was re-aligned to the standard weighting — a re-alignment to the series scorecard, not a change of view; its band (Solid), value read (Overvalued) and every dimension score are unchanged. No other re-rate is opened.

This is a dated artifact. Like the analyses it draws on, it carries market capitalisations, enterprise values and valuation multiples that go stale quickly — the deliberate deviation from this blog’s normal practice of keeping company posts free of point-in-time valuations. Every such figure is dated, and the whole post is refreshed when the underlying analyses are.

Table 8. Comparability ledger — every place a basis differs from this post’s construction

Source: this analysis, built while pulling the figures in Table 1 from the five underlying posts linked above. This ledger is the only place these basis differences are consolidated; Section 1 points to it before the reader meets a single figure, and every table and figure it qualifies cites it by name.

Methodology and its limits — eight choices, each with a cost. First, silver as the canonical flow and stock unit — it buys one metal every name shares and the reason they are grouped, at the cost of understating the two gold-weighted names (Pan American, Coeur), which the gold-context row is there to flag. Second, P/NAV as the primary value yardstick, with implied return to base-case fair value as the supporting read — P/NAV is the metric all five report, but the five NAVs sit on different base decks (Table 8), so it is comparable directionally rather than identically, and the implied-return column is the like-for-like value axis the dominance screen uses. Third, the silver-AISC cost figure read directionally — the five disclose cost on five denominators (silver segment, consolidated ex-Keno, per-AgEq, gold-equivalent, and Fresnillo’s per-mine AgEq), so the figure shows the shape of the cost curve, not a like-for-like ranking, and Coeur and Fresnillo are excluded from it. Fourth, the producer archetype weighting applied uniformly, since all five are the same archetype, every composite recomputed and reconciled. Fifth, one FX assumption — four of the five report and are valued in US dollars, and only Fresnillo, which reports in US dollars but trades in London in pence, is converted (at US$1.34/£) for its price, market cap and per-share figures; every other cross-company number is natively in dollars (Table 8). Sixth, the deck-sensitivity grid built only from published model outputs — it buys a shared price ladder without re-running any model, at the cost of a partial grid (Coeur absent, Hecla and First Majestic part-filled); a fully-populated grid would require re-deriving each NAV at the shared rungs, which the aggregation-only rule forbids. Seventh, the quality × value plot’s y-axis runs 2.9 to 4.2 rather than the full 1–5 — a full-range axis would compress five composites inside a 1.3-point band into the lower half of the plot; every point prints its own value, so nothing is read off the axis, and the deviation is recorded here. Eighth, no figure was skipped for want of a component — every graphic here is an HTML/CSS component from the library, and no cross-company question routed to a chart type the component set cannot express. The one partly absent figure is the deck-sensitivity grid, absent not for want of a component but because the underlying models were struck on non-comparable decks, as recorded above.

Data as of 19 August 2026; refreshed when the underlying analyses are refreshed. The timing note that matters: the five underlying analyses were struck across a five-day window (6–10 August 2026), and each company’s Q2 or interim results and any post-period event are as captured in its own analysis — Pan American’s Q2 2026 results (12 August) post-date its analysis, and Coeur’s figures are pro forma for the March 2026 New Gold close. Provenance: Fresnillo plc — Full-Year Results — 2025; Pan American Silver Corp. — Annual Information Form — 2025; Coeur Mining, Inc. — Form 10-K — 2025; Hecla Mining Company — Form 10-K — 2025; First Majestic Silver Corp. — Annual Information Form — 2025.

6.2 Disclaimer & disclosure

This comparison is for informational purposes only and is not investment advice; do your own research or consult a licensed advisor. It is a point-in-time snapshot struck across the 6–10 August 2026 window — share prices, multiples, analyst targets and the valuation reads all move, and silver-mining equities are especially volatile (all five are high-beta by design, First Majestic most of all). Net-asset-value and reserve figures are estimates prepared under stated modelling conventions and do not represent market value; reserves are estimates, not measured facts. The ratings and two-axis verdicts are analytical reads of quality and price, not personal buy or sell instructions. A ranking is not a recommendation to buy the top of it, a single non-dominated name is not a stock tip, and an “Overvalued” read on a low-quality name is not a short signal — First Majestic is dominated on arithmetic, not a name to avoid, and it carries the group’s sharpest upside if silver spikes. This report was prepared with AI assistance; figures were sourced from company filings and market data and reviewed, but readers should verify before acting. The author holds no position in any of the five companies as of the date of writing.