Silver CEO: "There's No Substitute for Silver"
Nomi Prins interviews Keith Neumeier, founder/CEO of First Majestic Silver, live at the Rule Symposium on the day of the company's Q2 production results — over $1B of cash on the balance sheet, a share buyback running into the drawdown, and the case that the $121 → correction is a textbook mid-bull 50% pullback, not the end of the cycle.
One-line take: the operator's-eye version of Prins' physical-vs-paper silver thesis, told by a producer with the balance sheet to act on it. Keith Neumeier (23 years running First Majestic Silver, Mexico-based) released Q2 production results the morning of the interview — "another fantastic quarter," with over $1 billion in the bank and "substantial profits" at current prices. His read on the drawdown from January's $121 silver: a normal ~50% mid-bull correction, and he draws the analogy to 2006 — mid-way through the 2002–2012 bull, when "people were saying the bull market's over," which is "the same kind of chatter" he hears now; June/July seasonality puts metal prices at their lows at this time of year on the 30-year chart. He separates the two cycles by what drove them: April 2011's run through $50 was "very much a paper move" that went parabolic — and parabolic moves "always go further than you expect" and then "correct more than you expect" — whereas the last six months have "really been a physical market," visible in bank margins rising and in a margin call the company met in December 2025, paid out of cash with ~500,000 oz sitting in the vault at its own mint, FirstMint.com, for exactly that use. On the stock: it ran $20 → $40 in a few weeks, institutions "thought they missed the boat," and he argues the behavioural error is buying strength — "it's tough to buy when things are going down… but it's actually the wrong thing to be doing"; brokers now tell him institutions are coming in. First Majestic is buying back its own shares into the weakness. Demand hasn't budged: "demand at $120 is exactly the same as it is today… I'm talking about physical demand," with silver "now been deemed a critical metal" and nuclear energy, AI, robotics and "all the electronic gadgets" needing it. Caveat to weigh: the guest is the CEO of the one stock discussed — this is a management view on its own equity, not third-party analysis; the buyback, cash balance and Q2 production claims are his, unverified here.
1. Stocks & names mentioned
| Ticker | Name | Research | View | What they said | At |
|---|
| AG | First Majestic Silver | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | CEO Keith Neumeier, on the day of Q2 production results: "another fantastic quarter," over $1 billion in the bank and "substantial profits" at current prices, with a share buyback running into the drawdown after the stock ran $20→$40 and gave much of it back. He met a December 2025 margin call from cash plus ~500,000 oz held at its own FirstMint vault, and says brokers report institutions finally coming into the market. Note: the speaker is First Majestic's CEO — a management view on his own stock. | watch ↗ |
| Silver | Silver (commodity) | — | Positive | The drawdown from January's $121 is "just a normal correction, 50% correction" — Neumeier's 2006 analogy inside the 2002–2012 bull, plus June/July seasonal lows on the 30-year chart. Unlike the 2010–11 paper move, the last six months have been "really a physical market"; demand "at $120 is exactly the same as it is today," and silver "has now been deemed a critical metal" needed by nuclear energy, AI, robotics and all electronics — "no substitute." | watch ↗ |
"View" reflects how each name was framed in this interview, not a price rating. FirstMint (FirstMint.com) is First Majestic's own mint and vault — a wholly-owned subsidiary, not a separate investable company, so it gets no row. Research: QT Qualtrim · SA Seeking Alpha · STK Stock Analysis. This is a video interview embedded in a Substack post — there are no timestamps, so the "At" cells open the post itself.
2. Talking points
Setting the scene — silver's round trip, and Q2 results the same morning
- Prins frames the year: silver "was up at triple digits, up at 121 in January, came down, I think, because a lot of paper trading. And now we're creeping back up."
- Neumeier: second-quarter production results came out that day — "another fantastic quarter for us. And obviously the cash flow at these prices is pretty fantastic. We've got over a billion dollars in the bank right now, which is a pretty good place to be."
Mexico risk versus the operating record
- Prins: First Majestic likely holds "one of the highest cash reserves right now in the silver market," and the stock has performed "even with what is perceived as potential risk" from being located in Mexico — investors who know how the company has been managed have watched that play out.
- Neumeier's answer starts from tenure: "23 years. It's not all up and down."
The 2006 analogy — a 50% correction is what mid-bull looks like
- "Right now, we're seeing a correction in the market. I look at 2006 almost exactly the same as it is today. We entered the bull market in 2002. It was a 10-year bull market. It ended in 2012 quite abruptly."
- "But in 06, I remember people were saying, oh, the bull market's over. And I'm hearing that same kind of chatter today. But this is just a normal correction, 50% correction. I know it looks bad, painful to some people, but this is normal."
Seasonality — June/July is where metals bottom
- "June, July, seasonality is on us. And if you look at the 30-year chart, metal prices are always at their lows at this time of year."
- Prins adds the near-term overlay: quarter-end rebalancing plus "all the Iran inflation overhang, and that didn't help."
Parabolic moves are never healthy — the 2011 lesson
- "In 2010, 2011, April 2011 when silver hit 50 bucks, [it] was a double top. We had only seen $50 twice in our lifetime. Breaking through 50 again, we went parabolic. And these parabolic moves are never healthy."
- The two-sided rule he draws from it: "you never know where the top is and they always go further than you expect… and when the correction occurs, it always corrects more than you expect. It doesn't matter if it's a commodity or a stock."
What the company does about it — buy back stock
- "We have to take advantage of that ourselves. We have a share buyback program in place. We've been buying back shares. Not that I like seeing the share price where it's at, of course, but it is what it is."
- The rest is operational: "keep doing what we do, produce silver and gold and try to make a profit, and we're making substantial profits right now." Prins: "you have amazing margins."
Institutions thought they missed the boat
- "A lot of the institutions who watch us… thought they missed the boat. The stock went from $20 to $40 in a matter of a few weeks."
- His standing message to them is a behavioural one: "it's tough to buy when things are going down. It seems to be easiest for people to buy when things are going up. But it's actually the wrong thing to be doing… I think they're finally getting it."
- The tell he watches: "What I'm hearing from the traders, the different brokerage firms that we work with, is that the institutions are coming into this market right now."
Physical vs. paper — the key difference between this cycle and 2011
- "The move in 2010–2011 was very much a paper move. This move that we've experienced over the last six months has really been a physical market where you've had actual real physical."
- Where it showed up: "we saw it show up at the banks. You see the margins start to increase." Prins' framing of the same point: the people, institutions and countries who need silver physically "hasn't stopped."
The December 2025 margin call — and the FirstMint vault
- "We actually had a margin call in December of 2025. And of course, we have enough money to meet those demands. And we just paid the margin and then dealt with the debt."
- The buffer behind it: "We have our own Mint, FirstMint.com, and we have a vault there. There's about 500,000 ounces sitting in that vault, which we use for special situations like that."
Demand at $120 = demand today, and the critical-metal designation
- "It hasn't changed. Demand at $120 is exactly the same as it is today. I'm talking about physical demand."
- "Silver has now been deemed a critical metal. And nuclear energy, AI, robotics, all the electronic gadgets that we're trying to produce as a human race, it all needs silver. And I think the institutions are finally catching on."
3. In plain English
AG — First Majestic Silver Positive
First Majestic mines silver (and some gold) in Mexico and has done so under the same founder-CEO for 23 years. The pitch here is simple cash mechanics: silver's price fell hard from January's peak, but the company's cost of pulling metal out of the ground didn't move — so at today's prices it still earns wide margins, "substantial profits," and has piled up more than a billion dollars of cash. Cash that large in a company this size is optionality: it can survive a long downturn, buy assets from weaker miners, and meet surprise cash demands without selling anything.
It is doing the textbook thing with that cash — buying back its own shares while the stock is depressed. A buyback shrinks the number of shares outstanding, so each remaining share owns a bigger slice of the same mines; done while the price is low, it's the cheapest form of "buying more silver." Management is effectively saying its own equity is the best asset on the menu right now.
The company also runs its own mint and vault (FirstMint) holding roughly 500,000 ounces of physical silver. That's not a side business so much as a shock absorber: when its bank issued a margin call in December 2025 — a demand to post more cash against its trading/hedging positions after prices swung — First Majestic simply paid it, drawing on cash with the vault behind it. Miners that get forced sellers in those moments are the ones that get hurt; this one didn't.
The risk to weigh: this account comes from the CEO of the stock in question, at an investment conference, on the day he released good numbers. Everything above — production, cash balance, the buyback — is his telling. The genuine external risks are unchanged: the metal price itself, and Mexico, where the mines sit and where mining policy and permitting have been unpredictable.
Silver — the metal Positive
Silver spiked to about $121 an ounce in January and then fell by roughly half. Neumeier's argument is that a 50% drop is not evidence the bull market is over — it's what the middle of a long bull market looks like. His reference point is 2006: halfway through the 2002–2012 run, prices dropped hard and everyone declared it finished, and he hears "the same kind of chatter today." He also notes that on a 30-year seasonal chart, metals routinely make their lows in June and July, which is exactly when this drop happened.
He separates why prices moved in the two cycles. The 2011 run to $50 was a paper move — driven by traders using futures and leverage rather than anyone taking delivery of metal. Paper moves go "parabolic" (a near-vertical price line), and his rule is that they always overshoot in both directions, so the crash back is as exaggerated as the spike. The last six months, by contrast, he calls a physical market: real buyers taking real metal, visible in banks raising margin requirements and in his own company receiving a margin call. That distinction matters because paper demand can evaporate overnight; industrial and physical demand can't.
And that demand, he says, hasn't flinched with the price: "demand at $120 is exactly the same as it is today." Silver has been designated a critical metal, and it goes into nuclear energy, AI hardware, robotics and effectively every electronic device — with no practical substitute at the same performance. If the metal is a necessity rather than a discretionary purchase, buyers keep buying through a price drop, and the drop tells you about positioning rather than about the underlying market.
Summary derived from the Prinsights Global Spotlight video interview for personal study. Not investment advice. © Nomi Prins / Prinsights for source material.