What are we looking for?
Sustainable dividends from mining stocks as copper demand and prices keep rising.
The screen
The price of the red metal is now hitting all-time highs. Notably, that’s in contrast to gold, which has pulled back from its record high in January, 2026.
Copper is gaining from a number of trends, but none more so than the boom in AI infrastructure building. In particular, AI data centres require significant copper volumes for high-conductivity electrical wiring. What’s more, transmission lines, substations and grid upgrades all require large amounts of copper.
Unlike gold, whose demand waxes and wanes with inflation and interest rates, copper prices tend to rise with the economy and the resulting increase in construction projects, including electrical installations. Longer-term, the shift to copper-hungry electric vehicles from gasoline-powered cars should also keep prices elevated. (EVs contain about 80 per cent more copper than gas-powered vehicles.)
Meanwhile, the lack of new copper mines will continue to constrain supply in the near-term.
From a list of copper stocks, we identified leaders that pay dividends. We then applied our TSI Dividend Sustainability Rating System. It awards points to a stock based on key factors:
- one point for five years of continuous dividend payments;
- two points for more than five;
- two points if it has raised the payment in the past five years;
- one point for management’s commitment to dividends;
- one point for operating in non-cyclical industries;
- one point for limited exposure to foreign currency rates and freedom from political interference;
- two points for a strong balance sheet, including manageable debt and adequate cash;
- two points for a long-term record of positive earnings and cash flow sufficient to cover dividend payments;
- one point for being an industry leader.
Companies with 10 to 12 points have the most secure dividends, or the highest sustainability. Those with seven to nine points have above average sustainability; average sustainability, four to six points; and below average sustainability, one to three points.
More about TSI Network
TSI Network is the online home of The Successful Investor Inc. – the group of widely followed Canadian investment newsletters by editor and publisher Pat McKeough. They include our award-winning flagship newsletter, The Successful Investor, and the TSI Dividend Advisor. TSI Network is also affiliated with Successful Investor Wealth Management.
What we found
Our TSI Dividend Sustainability Rating System generated six stocks.
Canada’s Teck Resources Ltd. gets a big part of its revenue from copper, with the rest mostly coming from zinc.
Anglo-Australian mining giants Rio Tinto PLC and BHP Group Ltd. are both major global producers of copper.
Mexico’s Southern Copper Corp. mines the red metal in Mexico and Peru.
Toronto-headquartered Lundin Mining Corp. extracts copper from three mines in Brazil and Chile.
Junior miner Amerigo Resources Ltd., based in Vancouver, produces copper by processing tailings from Codelco’s El Teniente mine in Chile, the world’s largest underground copper mine.
Scott Clayton, MBA, is senior analyst for TSI Network and associate editor of TSI Dividend Advisor.