One of the many ASX gold shares that enjoyed big returns last year was Northern Star Resources Ltd (ASX: NST).
The company is a global-scale Australian gold producer with projects in Australia and North America.
In 2025, its share price rose 73% on the back of soaring commodity prices.
Image source: Getty Images
Rocky start to 2026
However despite the strong gains last year, it has been a bumpy ride in the early days of 2026.
Investors have been offloading Northern Star shares to start the year after the company reported softer gold sales for the December 2025 quarter and trimmed its full-year production guidance.
The company revised its annual production guidance to between 1.6 million ounces and 1.7 million ounces, from between 1.7 million ounces and 1.85 million ounces.
This triggered a 8.6% share price drop on January 2.
The company said operational hiccups during the December quarter – including equipment failures and ongoing recovery works – led to reduced gold sales across all three production centres.
Should you buy the dip?
Following last week's sell-off, Broker Bell Potter weighed in with updated analysis on Northern Star shares.
The broker said the stock closed 8.6% lower on the announcement equating to A$3.3bn in market capitalisation loss.
Assuming that these issues are merely one-offs, with production normalising over 2H, we would argue the response is potentially overdone. On our estimates, we model a -12% impact to EBITDA (A$460m) for FY26.
Bell Potter said in the report that Northern Star will continue to generate above average returns in the current environment.
Target price unchanged
Despite the recent dip, Bell Potter has reiterated its price target on Northern Star shares.
However, the broker has updated its model ahead of the 2Q result (22nd Jan) which sees EPS decline 17% in FY26 and increase 11% and 27% in FY27 and FY28 respectively on higher assumed gold prices.
Bell Potter has maintained its price target of $30.00 along with its buy recommendation on Northern Star shares.
From yesterday's closing price of $24.95, this indicates an upside of 20.24%.
This is in line with targets elsewhere.
TradingView has an average price target of $29.82 and online brokerage platform SelfWealth lists the stock as undervalued by approximately 21.4%.
