Freeport-McMoRan (NYSE:FCX) has just reported earnings and the stock is in rally mode. What a long way we have come from the controversial discussion of the slow death of the company. When the company was on its death bed we saw that copper prices were at six-year lows. Oil was at ten-year lows. Gold had meandered lower from its highs four years ago. Even by-product prices were at multi-year lows. Following my calls, the stock hit multi-decade lows touching $3.52 a share. About a month later I upgraded the name from certain death to on life support, and grew more bullish for the long-term. If it could get help from the economy and commodities prices, it could skyrocket again. The truth is that the name has had an outrageous rally, but commodity prices seem to have risk to the upside, not the down side. Over the last two years the miner pulled out all the stops to fight for survival, but is this paying off?

Let's check in on these results which offer clues to the health of the company. The report had some causes for concern, but definitely was reflective of a company moving in the right direction. The company saw a profit in the quarter with net income of $268 million or $0.18 per share. After making some adjustments, Q2 2017 adjusted income per share was $0.17. It is interesting to note that this was still a miss of $0.04 against analyst estimates. Pretty wide miss, and continues a string of wider than expected losses in the name. That is not good, but there are strengths in the name despite the ongoing poor operating environment. Namely, FCX has maintained a strong level of sales to keep cash flows going, and even managed a profit.

So how were those sales? Well they were actually up from last year thanks to planned cost savings and better commodity pricing, in addition to strong sales. Consolidated sales totaled 942 million pounds of copper, 432 thousand ounces of gold, 25 million pounds of molybdenum and 468,000 barrels of oil equivalents. This is mostly up from Q3 2016, with the exception of oil, which the company has indicated would be produced and sold far less at this juncture. Of course, average realized prices were still somewhat weak. They were up from last quarter to $2.65 per pound for copper, $1243 per ounce of gold and $9.58 per pound of molybdenum.