⚠ Passed for Second PlaceModerate threat

For most of the last twenty years the question in senior gold mining was whether Barrick or Newmont was the largest producer. That question has been settled and Barrick is not in the running: Newmont produced 5.89 million attributable ounces in 2025, and Agnico Eagle took second place with 3.447 million against Barrick's 3.26 million¹.

Losing roughly 200,000 ounces of rank is not, in itself, a financial event. Scale in mining does not confer pricing power, because gold trades at one price for everyone, so being second or third changes nothing about what an ounce sells for.

What it does change is the story. Barrick's scale argument has always been that size buys optionality — the ability to fund exploration across continents, to absorb one mine's failure, to bid for assets nobody else can finance. Being overtaken by a company that built its position through disciplined operation in stable jurisdictions raises a question the moat pages should sit with: whether Barrick's scale has been producing that optionality or absorbing it.

The counterweight is that Barrick's scale is genuinely broader — six Tier-One mines, a copper business being built at Lumwana, and a reserve base among the largest in the industry.

Watch attributable production against the two peers over three years. A miner losing volume rank while its costs rise faster than theirs is not diversifying. It is shrinking.