Hecla Mining Co. (HL) is one of the oldest companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and it was one of 2025’s big winners, up a whopping 295% as silver prices soared nearly to $71.60 per troy ounce.

The bloom has come off silver, at least in the short term. It’s tumbled nearly 38% from its Jan. 29 all-time high of nearly $122 an ounce. It did finish Feb. 18 at $77.52, up nearly 10% on the year.

Hecla, meanwhile, is down 35% from its Jan. 26 peak of $34.17, but is still up 14.7% for the year.

Related: Market uncertainty resets silver, gold bets

Hecla Mining reported record 2025 revenue of $1.4 billion, up 53% from a year earlier. Earnings were 49 cents a share for the year, up from 6 cents in 2024. For the fourth quarter, earnings were 20 cents, compared with basically breakeven a year earlier.

Hecla is bullish about 2026

The company remains confident that 2026 will be a strong year. Not so much because it sees silver prices soaring again. Rather, Hecla CEO Rob Krcmarov and his team have planned their strategies around several silver-price scenarios and believe they can do well in almost all of them.

At a silver price of $30 an ounce and gold at $2,500, Hecla sees free cash flow topping $200 million. At $75 silver and $4,500 gold, a touch lower than the Feb. 18 closes for silver and gold, the free cash jumps to $600 million-plus. And much higher at $100 silver and $5,500 gold.

These are not official guidance; however, company officials warned during the earnings call. But $30 silver doesn’t seem likely.

Hecla’s confidence is built around three concepts:

  • Its assets are all located in the United States and Canada, where the rule of law matters, CEO Krcmarov told an audience at its New York investor day in January.
  • The company’s long life and long-lived assets give the company strength.
  • Hecla has transformed into a leaner, more focused, disciplined operator.

Based in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, Hecla has seen silver, its primary product, have big booms and spectacular busts.

It endured a 3-year strike at its Lucky Friday mine in Mullan, Idaho, and then a fire that closed the mine for four months in late 2023.

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Some of its investments in the last 20-odd years didn’t work out. The stock went nowhere, and, in 2024, its CEO abruptly retired. Finally, the company went out and hired Krcmarov, a former executive vice president of Barrick Gold, now Barrick Mining, as its CEO.

How silver runup helped Hecla

So far, fairly good. The operations and planning have been improved. The company decided it was better to concentrate on silver (with gold and other metals as byproducts).

And it made the call to concentrate its efforts on properties in the western United States and Canada. (It agreed in late January to sell its Casa Berardi gold mine in northern Quebec, Canada, to Orezone Gold Corp. of Vancouver, B.C. The deal, valued at $593 million, includes $160 million in cash, stock in Orezone and future considerations.)

The big runup in metals prices has also let Hecla pay down gobs of debt: Net debt was trimmed by 47% to $268.7 million by the end of 2025.

So, Hecla can pick new investments carefully to go with Greens Creek, a very profitable mine in Alaska, the Lucky Friday operations and its Keno Hill and other prospects in Nevada.

Analysts, for the most part, rate the stock a hold, but they have been raising price targets the last six months into the upper $20 range to mid-$30 range.

If silver prices can hold, the future looks at least stable and probably better.

Silver bars at Pro Arum dealer in Germany.

Attention must be paid to silver’s history

If the price of silver can hold, it’s good for Hecla, but that’s the big billion-dollar question.

Not just for Hecla but competitors like Mexico’s Fresnillo plc (the industry giant), Pan-American Silver, Newmont, and Poland’s KGHM Polska Meidz.

Related: Silver bears flip bullish after prices plunge

Prices soared in 1979-80 as the Hunt Brothers of Texas tried to corner the silver market. The subsequent crash shockingly threatened Wall Street‘s stability. It had a big runup and crash after 2011 and then took off, along with gold and bitcoin, in the last few years.

While the price of silver is down more than a third from that January all-time high, it is a metal that has wide and venerable appeal: bought by investors, gold-and-silver bugs and the like. Families collected silver cutlery, plates and related products.

But silver has long been a key element in the development and spread of technology.

The invention of photography depended on silver. And its uses have spread well beyond.

One finds silver in electronics, solar cells, auto parts and the like. Big data centers are using silver because it can conductor electricity.

Since you’re reading this story on a computer or a mobile device, silver is a big reason why it’s possible.

And the demand is growing so much that the world is short silver for all uses by some 200 million ounces a year.

How high can silver prices go?

It depends on the institution making the prediction.

Many big Wall Street banks see silver landing about where it is now: somewhere between, say $70 and $90.

An outlier in the thinking, according to Barrons, is a Citigroup team headed by Max Layton. Until the big break, the group says silver was behaving like  “ ‘gold squared’ or ‘gold on steroids,’ and we think that likely continues until silver looks expensive by historical standards, relative to gold.”

Which means, Barrons said: Citi thinks silver at $150 an ounce may be reached before spring.

Hecla and its management and investors would love it.

As one who visited the bottom of the Lucky Friday mine, when it was at 4,300 feet or so, I know things change. The mine’s main depth is now more than 6,200 feet deep.

So, we’ll see.

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