By Adam Whittaker

Commodity giant Glencore's metal traders booked record earnings last year amid optimal market conditions for the unit, while performance at its energy-trading business suffered as the sector normalized.

Combined, the two trading units reported an 8% fall in adjusted earnings before interest and taxes to $2.92 billion. Glencore attributed that drop to a challenging energy market.

The group's metal traders posted a near 20% surge in adjusted earnings. But its energy and coal trading business crashed by close to a third from a year earlier. Conditions in the sector were different than in 2022, when Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine plunged oil and gas markets into chaos and helped drive Glencore's energy trading unit to record profits.

Its energy-trading business last year grappled with oversupplied markets, and high levels of volatility in the first half of last year.

For Glencore's metal traders, by contrast, 2025 was a year of uncertainty and supply constraints. Conditions that represented "a very exciting set of opportunities" for traders, Chief Executive Gary Nagle said.

The trading unit as a whole reported earnings around the midpoint of its adjusted guidance range of $2.3 billion to $3.5 billion a year.

Glencore's traders take commodities and sell them to customers around the world. It also buys from third parties with the goal of selling on for a higher price. Benefiting from price differences--or arbitrage--across locations is central to how traders make money.

Last year, copper benefited from a perfect storm of constrained supply, rising demand fueled by the spread of AI data centers, and extreme disruption unleashed by President Trump's trade policies.

The prospect of tariffs on imports of copper triggered an influx of the metal into the U.S. and pushed prices to record levels. U.S. priced futures contracts notched up significant premiums compared to those priced in London.

This came to an end in late July after Trump decided to apply the tariffs to copper products, but not the raw material itself. That development caused copper futures to plunge around 20%.

Conversely, the energy market last year presented challenging trading conditions and few arbitrage opportunities. The company in those circumstances opted to play safe. "We're not a company that just simply goes out there and bets," Nagle said.

Still, there were signs of recovery over the year's second half, the company said. And the momentum is continuing into 2026, Nagle said.

Proposed export quotas on Indonesian coal, rain hurting steelmaking-coal production in Australia and some geopolitical instability induced price volatility in the oil market, offered more attractive conditions for traders, he added.

Glencore reported a fall in full-year earnings despite an improved performance over the second half. Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization fell 6% on year in 2025 to $13.51 billion. The company said that its performance reflected lower energy and steelmaking-coal prices, but that this was partially offset by stronger metals prices, including higher zinc earnings.

Write to Adam Whittaker at adam.whittaker@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 18, 2026 08:13 ET (13:13 GMT)

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