KEFI Gold Copper shares have returned roughly 53% over the trailing twelve months to April 2026, according to Yahoo Finance (a figure most AIM miners would welcome) yet gold itself rose 64.53% in the 2025 calendar year alone, and the metal is now trading above $4,500.
For shareholders who bought years ago and have been waiting for production to begin, the gap between gold’s performance and their own portfolio return is the central frustration. The data makes that frustration quantifiable.
A Wide Gap Between KEFI Gold Copper Shares and Their Targets
Over five years, London Stock Exchange data shows KEFI’s stock is down 25.6%, a result that sits 70.8 percentage points below the FTSE 350 Index, which returned 45.2% over the same period. The five-year compound annual growth rate (the annualised return over a multi-year period, or CAGR) works out at -5.8% for KEFI versus 7.8% for the FTSE 350. Based on those CAGRs, a £10,000 stake in KEFI five years ago would be worth about £7,460 today, while the same amount in a FTSE 350 tracker would have grown to around £14,560.
The present share price tells its own story. Stockopedia records the last closing price at 1.22p, while the analyst consensus target sits at 4.20p, some 243% higher. SP Angel updated its own target to 4.9p as recently as January 2026, according to Vox Markets. Whether those targets reflect genuine optimism about the assets or are simply stale projections that have not been revised downward is a question worth asking.
Stockopedia also shows shares in issue have grown to 13,772,018,660 by year-end December 2025. That compares with 7,980.8 million shares recorded by Edison Group in its March 2025 research note, when market capitalisation stood at £42m and the share price was 0.52p. The near-doubling of the share count over that period represents substantial dilution (a reduction in each existing shareholder’s proportional stake in the company) as KEFI has continued to fund itself ahead of first production.
On the income statement, Hargreaves Lansdown data for 2025 shows total revenue of £0.00, as expected for a pre-production miner, and a net loss of £9.69m. Total assets stood at £64.36m against total liabilities of £9.57m. Separately, Halifax Investments reports that KEFI’s wider annual loss for 2025 grew to £57.2m from £39.1m in the prior year, a figure that likely incorporates non-cash items such as impairments and revaluations rather than purely cash outgoings, which explains the divergence from the £9.69m net income figure.
What Shareholders Are Watching at Tulu Kapi
The project at the centre of KEFI’s investment case is Tulu Kapi in Ethiopia. KEFI signed a US$240 million debt funding agreement for the development in October 2025, according to Vox Markets. Proactive Investors reports the company has stated that the project schedule remains commissioning in late 2027 and full production in 2028, with lenders’ approval of detailed plans in place.
An uptick in the share price during 2025 was not triggered by a KEFI announcement. According to the company’s own Q&A page, the price had sat at or below 0.55p for much of 2025, and the move stemmed primarily from a tweet by the Ethiopian Government indicating it was set to award the Africa Finance Corporation its long-awaited country membership, a step seen as important to the project’s final financing structure.
Edison Group’s March 2025 research note modelled an IRR (internal rate of return, the annualised profit rate if an investment plays out as projected) of 58.2% for investors buying at 0.516p and holding through to 2036. Gold’s trajectory since then has only strengthened that modelling’s assumptions. Goldman Sachs has reaffirmed a structurally bullish outlook on gold, with a price target of $4,900 by end-2026 and upside risk if underallocated private investors add to their portfolios.
KEFI, which originally listed on AIM as KEFI Minerals in December 2006 before adopting its current name in August 2020, has tested shareholder patience across nearly two decades. Gold rose from $2,624.50 to $4,318.18 across 2025, touching a year high of $4,533.57 along the way. The binary question for holders is straightforward: if Tulu Kapi reaches commissioning on schedule in late 2027, a gold price well above $4,000 transforms the project economics. If further delays emerge, the share count will almost certainly keep rising to fund the gap.
