This company has a security issue. I suspect employees are involved, as it would take an inside operation using forklifts and trucks to move that much copper.
Poor inventory management, obviously. Hence why investors are running away. They don't believe the robbery story.
At this dollar figure it seems like either: A) senior management is totally incompetent and should all be fired Or B) some top-level accounting fraud and auditors who are either corrupt or incompetent. This isn't a company that just happens to have some copper around, processing it is the core of their business. It might be interesting to look at whether this company is involved in any options trading. Perhaps they were selling contracts they couldn't deliver on and now have to claim it was all stolen.
I was asked to look at a mysterious theft of three massive copper cable drums from the main utility company in Botswana. They were many tons each, a hand-span thick and would have required heavy equipment to move but none was used. Didn't take long to realise they just cut the cables and passed them through the fence like sausage links. In decades of using fenced but poorly patrolled depots, nobody had seen this, they believed the sheer size of the things was protection enough. Of course it was Chinese mine workers came up with the idea.
%% Europe's biggest copper producer is being investigated for conspiracy between employees + suppliers. Russia was the biggest supplier of copper to Aurubis , before Ukraine war. It figures CNn would leave that out. [Ar15.com, source]