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 four underlying analyses, which were struck across a short window: Pan American and Hecla at the 6 Aug 2026 close, Coeur and First Majestic at the 10 Aug close — so per-company price dates differ by four trading days and each is shown in its own cell (rule S14). Price deck: one shared deck for every column — the fixed silver grid of blog-valuation.md Table 3b, 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 four underlying analyses were each struck on their own silver base (US$38–50) and their own gold base (US$3,200–3,500), which is why the shared-deck sensitivity grid in Section 3.2 is only partly populated (Table 8 ledger). FX: not applicable — all four report and are valued in US dollars. Ratings (producer archetype-weighted composite, to one decimal): Hecla 4.2/5 · Coeur 3.9/5 · Pan American 3.3/5 · First Majestic 2.9/5 — all four recompute exactly to their published figures, so no rating is re-rated here. Value reads (base case): Hecla and Pan American Fairly valued; Coeur Modestly overvalued; First Majestic Overvalued — not one reads as undervalued, because every one is priced for silver holding near its 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 in the same direction here — the highest-rated name (Hecla) is also the least overvalued, so the frontier collapses to a single name and there is no quality-versus-price trade-off to weigh (Section 5); and the whole group trades at a premium to conservative NAV — not one of the four 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.

Four silver mining stocks, four different ways to own the same bull market. 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 on earth, 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 four on one construction — one date, one currency, one shared silver deck, one nine-point scorecard — and produces two findings no single-name post could: quality and price point the same way in this group, so the best company is also the least expensive relative to its own fair value and nothing is a clear bargain-for-quality (Section 5); and every one of the four 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 four 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 four large, listed, silver-led precious-metals producers with a published Metal Pilot single-name analysis as of August 2026: Pan American Silver, Coeur Mining, Hecla Mining and First Majestic Silver. The boundary is silver-led producer/operator with a US-dollar-denominated primary listing and a published analysis. Two names a reader might expect are absent for stated reasons. Fresnillo — the world’s largest primary silver miner — has no published Metal Pilot analysis yet and trades primarily in London, so it is excluded until its analysis exists rather than compared inline (rule S2). Wheaton Precious Metals is excluded 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 four here are ordered by market capitalisation in US dollars, largest first — which puts Pan American and Coeur (both ~US$19–20 bn) well ahead of Hecla and First Majestic (both ~US$9–10 bn), a clean 2-and-2 split by size. 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 four 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 four 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 four 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), and Coeur reports on a gold-equivalent basis as a gold-primary producer and publishes no clean silver AISC. 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 four underlying posts linked in Section 6.1; market data per those posts — Pan American and Hecla at the 6 Aug 2026 close, Coeur and First Majestic at the 10 Aug close. All four report in US dollars — there is no FX conversion anywhere in this table. 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 — 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 (rule S14). Reserves are 2P (proven and probable) under NI 43-101/CIM (Pan American, First Majestic), S-K 1300 (Coeur) and the US SEC standard (Hecla); classification, code and effective date are carried in each underlying analysis (rule A9). 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 2.2 to 1 on market capitalisation but the size order is not the silver order: Pan American is the biggest company and holds the deepest silver reserve (452 Moz), but Hecla and First Majestic — half its size — buy more silver per dollar than it does. Second, two of the four are barely silver companies at the margin: Pan American earns 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 them 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

Pan American Silver is the largest name here at US$20.2 billion, the leading listed silver producer with twelve mines across the Americas, 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 second 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 third 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 fourth at US$9.3 billion and is the group’s high-beta specialist: the most silver-led and highest-cost of the four, 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 flip the group, and that is the section’s first finding. Pan American produces the most silver — 22.8 Moz, nearly half again Coeur’s ~13 Moz — yet on a per-dollar basis it buys 1.13 Moz per US$1 bn of market value, second-last of the four. Hecla leads the per-dollar read at 1.75 Moz, 55% ahead of Pan American, and First Majestic is second at 1.66 despite being the smallest producer. The two largest companies buy the least silver per dollar; the two smallest buy the most. Whether that is a discount worth having is Section 3’s question — but the direction is unambiguous, 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 four (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 the ranking flip is total. Pan American holds 452 Moz of 2P silver — 4.5 times First Majestic’s 101 Moz — but per US$1 bn of market value it buys 22.4 Moz against Hecla’s 23.8, and First Majestic’s 10.9 Moz per dollar is less than half Hecla’s, the widest per-dollar spread in the reserve figure. The absolute order runs Pan American, Coeur, Hecla, First Majestic; the per-dollar order runs Hecla, Pan American, Coeur, First Majestic — only Coeur and First Majestic keep their relative places. 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, 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 four 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. Coeur is excluded from the figure: it reports on a gold-equivalent basis as a gold-primary producer and publishes no clean silver AISC, so a bar for it would be a different object (rule S7). All three deviations are in the ledger (Table 8).

Figure 3. Silver all-in sustaining cost (three of four; Coeur reports on a gold-equivalent basis)

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 is excluded and named in the axis 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).

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 cost cell is n/d — a neutral card, not a low value — because it reports on a gold-equivalent basis and discloses no comparable silver AISC (rule S7).

Hecla leads all three columns — the only clean sweep in the grid — and the two 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. First Majestic is last on both reserves-per-dollar and cost, mid-table on production-per-dollar; Pan American leads none, sitting 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 two ~US$19–20 bn seniors would win on scale-adjusted quality should note that they win nothing here.

The four sort into three shapes, not four, and the thing that separates them is metal mix and cost. 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 2.2 to 1 on market capitalisation and 4.5 to 1 on silver reserves, but the size order and the per-dollar order disagree at every turn. Reserve life runs from ~6 years (First Majestic) to ~14 (Hecla, Pan American), a duration spread that matters enormously when the whole group is priced for a metal near its highs. And two of the four are not really silver companies — Pan American earns most of its money from gold and Coeur reports in gold-equivalent ounces — so a pure-silver reading flatters neither.

2.6 Balance sheets and capital returns

All four carry net cash, which is the section’s first and least discriminating finding. Every one of the four 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). 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 four 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 four 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 (rule S2); every one is currently strong, but three of the four (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 three 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 four disclose share-count change over different windows (Coeur and First Majestic quantified, 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 (Hecla) in place.

The net-cash column is unanimous; the dilution column is where capital allocation is actually earned. Every one of the four 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. Hecla’s dilution is the most modest, and 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 four 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 four says so in its filings. 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 four 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 four hedges 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 in two. 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. Pan American and Coeur are, at the margin, gold companies: 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 Pan American and Coeur precisely because their gold leg is held flat.

Jurisdiction is the price risk none of the four 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; Pan American’s five-country Latin American spread is the worst, and it is compounded by two stranded assets — Escobal and Navidad — that are the sector’s poster children for political risk. First Majestic’s four-of-five-in-Mexico concentration sits between them, exposed to mining-law and security risk. The named risk most likely to break each thesis, from each company’s own register: 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. Three of the four are, in the end, the same risk — the silver 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 four 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$3,200–3,500), 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 four underlying posts (Section 6.1), at each company’s own price date. The four NAVs are not on one shared deck — Pan American’s is struck at US$48/oz 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. 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 four 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. 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 of the four 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) and “least overvalued against its own fair value” (Hecla) are two 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 and metal mix. Section 5 reads the two together rather than picking one, but the headline is already visible: not one of the four 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 of blog-valuation.md Table 3b. 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); 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 (rule S7).

Figure 7. NAV per share across the shared silver ladder (three of four; 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 — 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 (rule S7). Hecla’s row is a 1.0× intrinsic NAV before its ~1.6× silver-producer premium; Pan American holds gold at US$3,500 and First Majestic at US$3,500, so both understate the gold-lifted case. Coeur is excluded — it is gold-driven and publishes no silver grid. Share prices for the crossover read: Pan American US$48.05, Hecla US$14.43, First Majestic US$18.85, each at its Table 1 date.

The crossover read is uniform and it is “never” — not one of the three crosses its share price at any populated rung, 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 three, and the row that would climb fastest above US$60 given its beta, but its own grid stops there. The uniform result — every silver-led name trading above its conservative NAV at every populated rung — 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. Four names, four ways of saying the same thing: the premium is to the metal price, not to intrinsic value.

4. Rating Scoreboard

All four 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 in this case that is almost exactly what the underlying analyses already used — Hecla’s analysis benchmarks against Pan American, Coeur and First Majestic by name; Pan American’s, First Majestic’s and Coeur’s each benchmark against the Americas silver-producer set that is essentially this group plus Fresnillo. The one systematic limitation to state plainly: each single-name analysis scored some relative dimensions against a slightly wider set that included Fresnillo, the largest primary silver miner, which is absent here for want of a published analysis (Section 1). A star earned against a bar that included Fresnillo is not silently identical to one earned against these four — but re-checking the relative dimensions (asset quality, cost, reserves, balance sheet, capital allocation) against this four-name group moves no star, because Fresnillo’s removal changes the bar, not the subject’s position on any metric in Table 1. No relative star is re-scored in this post.

Table 5. The nine-dimension scorecard, four companies

All four are the producer/operator archetype, so all four carry the same weighting from blog-company.md Table 2: 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 four 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 thirty-six numbers. Composites are Σ(weight × score), reproducible on sight: 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). All four composites recompute exactly to the figures their own posts publish — 3.30, 3.91, 4.15 and 2.85 — so no rating is re-rated here and no reconciliation delta exists.

Cost is the widest-spread row on the board, and it is the row that decides the group. It runs 5, 3, 3, 2 — 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 four 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 4, 5, 5, 4 — every one of the four 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 ~0.65 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 four 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, 4, 5, 2 down the market-cap order — the largest company, Pan American, scores the lowest (2, on five Latin American countries plus two stranded assets), 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 seniors carry the group’s worst jurisdiction (Pan American) and its least-clean cost disclosure (Coeur), and the smaller Hecla is the cleanest name on both.

Growth and cost trade off against each other, and First Majestic is where the trade-off is starkest. The growth row reads 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 survives a different weighting completely — every rank holds. Recomputed as a plain unweighted mean of all nine dimensions, the order is Hecla 4.11, Coeur 4.00, Pan American 3.22, First Majestic 2.89 — position for position identical to the archetype-weighted order of 4.15, 3.91, 3.30 and 2.85. The closest margin is Hecla against Coeur for first, which narrows from 0.24 points under the archetype weighting to 0.11 under equal weights without crossing; lifting the four base-weight dimensions from 6.25% to 11.1% rewards Coeur’s 5 on growth and its cleaner jurisdiction, but not enough to overtake Hecla’s five-star cost. The order is a read on the companies, not an artifact of which dimensions this archetype weights heavily.

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 four 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 four 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, Coeur and First Majestic at 10 Aug. Quality is the archetype-weighted composite from Table 5, to one decimal; all four match the figures their own posts publish. 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 (rule S16). 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%); the horizontal marker is the 4.25 High-quality threshold, which none of the four clears — all four are Solid or Average, so the plot sits below it. The y-axis runs 2.9 to 4.2, the observed composite range, rather than the full 1–5, so the four 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. 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 (rule S16), not P/NAV — on raw P/NAV Coeur screens cheapest (Section 3.1), and the divergence is discussed below.

The four points fall on a rising diagonal, and that near-straight line is the finding — but it is the reverse of what a peer group usually shows. Most comparisons in this series produce a trade-off: the cheap name is the weak one, the strong name is the dear one, and the reader has to weigh quality against price. Here the two axes agree. Rank the group by quality — Hecla, Coeur, Pan American, First Majestic — and you have ranked it by implied return to fair value in the identical order: −2%, −16%, −32%, −41%, monotonically down. The best operator is also the least overvalued; the worst is also the most overvalued. There is no cheap-high-quality bargain in the top-left and no expensive-low-quality trap that isn’t also the lowest-rated name — the diagonal runs from bottom-left (First Majestic) to top-right (Hecla) with nothing off it.

Hecla is the only name not dominated, and that is the sharpest possible “single answer” a comparison can produce. A company is dominated when another beats it on both quality and value at once. Here Hecla beats every other name on both axes — higher quality and a smaller discount to fair value than Coeur, Pan American and First Majestic alike — so the frontier collapses to a single point. Coeur in turn dominates Pan American and First Majestic; Pan American dominates First Majestic; First Majestic is dominated by all three. In a group where quality and price line up this cleanly, the dominance screen does what it almost never can — it leaves exactly one name standing, because there is no trade-off dimension on which a lower-rated name buys you enough discount to compensate. 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 in this group is the better trade, and that a reader who prefers another name is expressing a view the screen does not — on the silver price, on gold torque, 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 four underlying posts (Section 6.1), at each company’s own price date; implied upside is against the price in the same row. 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 four, explore Metal Pilot.

6. Sources, methodology & disclaimer

6.1 Sources, methodology & data vintage

This post is a synthesis of four 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 four on one construction. The underlying analyses, with every figure sourced and every scorecard star substantiated, are:

• 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 four 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 four underlying posts, at each company’s own price date (Pan American and Hecla at the 6 Aug 2026 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, and there is no arithmetic defect to flag. All four ratings were recomputed from their own published dimension scores on the producer archetype weighting and every one matched: 3.30, 3.91, 4.15 and 2.85. No re-rate is opened on any source post.

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 four 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 four report, but the four NAVs sit on four 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 four disclose cost on four denominators (segment, consolidated ex-Keno, per-AgEq, gold-equivalent), so the figure shows the shape of the cost curve, not a like-for-like ranking, and Coeur is excluded from it. Fourth, the producer archetype weighting applied uniformly, since all four are the same archetype, every composite recomputed and reconciled. Fifth, no FX anywhere — all four report and are valued in US dollars, the one comparison assumption this series does not have to defend here. Sixth, the deck-sensitivity grid built only from published model outputs — it buys a shared price ladder without re-running any model (rule S2), 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 four 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 (rule S19). 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 four underlying analyses were struck across a four-trading-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: 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 four 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 four companies as of the date of writing.