Freeport loses No. 1 spot among Ariz. companies

• Freeport-McMoRan has shed almost two-thirds of its value over roughly the past year, pushing its stock-market worth to second among Arizona corporations
• Freeport-McMoRan was almost three times more valuable than trash-hauler Republic Services this time last year, but the two big Arizona companies have switched places
• Lower prices for copper, oil and other commodities underscores Freeport-McMoRan’s problems. The company has logged two straight quarterly losses

Following two awful quarters in which the company lost $4.3 billion combined, Freeport-McMoRan Inc. has relinquished its unofficial title as Arizona’s most valuable corporation.

As the week drew to a close, the Phoenix mining and energy giant saw its stock market capitalization, or value, stumble to $12.8 billion, slipping below that of Republic Services, which is worth $14.5 billion.

This time last year, Freeport-McMoRan was worth almost $38 billion, making it almost three times more valuable than Phoenix-based Republic Services, which runs a network garbage disposal and recycling operations. Freeport-McMoRan also had been Arizona’s profit leader last year, by a wide margin.

Republic Services’ shares have risen slightly since last August, while Freeport’s stock has shed two-thirds of its value. The stock tumbled nearly 23 percent just last week, hastened by disclosure that the company had logged a multibillion-dollar loss for the second quarter in a row.

For Freeport-McMoRan, the loss of $1.85 billion, or $1.78 a share, on revenue of $4.25 billion in the quarter ended June 30 largely reflected a write-down of the value of its oil and gas assets. Freeport-McMoran also said its cash holdings have dropped by nearly $1 billion over the past year.

About 57 million Freeport-McMoRan shares changed hands Friday, when the stock closed down $1.35 a share at $12.29.

The company’s stock price had a 52-week high of $38.26.

By contrast, Republic Services this week reported a profit of $190 million, or 54 cents per share, on revenue of $2.31 billion for the second quarter.

Freeport-McMoRan has been hit by a double whammy of falling prices for metals and hydrocarbons. Copper, the main commodity it produces, has dropped from an average $3.16 a pound as of the middle of 2014 to $2.71 a pound as of mid-2015, with flat sales. Average realized oil prices of $67.61 a barrel in the most recent quarter were down 29 percent compared to the year-earlier period, and oil prices have continued to slide to around $48 a barrel.

The company last month filed paperwork to spin off some of its oil and gas properties in an initial public offering. Most of those properties had been acquired just two years ago.

“We remain focused on managing our costs and capital expenditures under volatile market conditions as we seek to strengthen our balance sheet and build values from our strong portfolio of resources,” said Chairman James Moffett and Chief Executive Officer Richard Adkerson in a statement tied to the quarterly earnings report.