Comstock at Lytham Summit: Bold Vision for Renewable Growth

On Tuesday, 01 April 2025, Comstock Mining Inc. (NYSE: LODE) presented a transformative strategy at the Lytham Partners 2025 Industrials & Basic Materials Investor Summit. The company outlined its ambitious plans to leverage innovative technologies in renewable fuels and metals recycling, while also addressing the challenges of commercializing breakthrough technologies. Comstock’s leadership highlighted both the potential for significant growth and the hurdles they face in scaling operations.

Key Takeaways

• Comstock aims to create two publicly traded companies focused on renewable metals and fuels.
• Marathon Petroleum has invested in Comstock’s fuels subsidiary, with further strategic investments anticipated.
• A new solar panel recycling facility is expected to process 100,000 tons annually, with permits pending.
• The Dayton mining project is projected to generate $400 million in cash flow over six years.
• Comstock is targeting a Series A offering for its fuels subsidiary between April and July.

Financial Results

• Comstock projects $50 to $70 million in cash flow from a $12 to $15 million investment in its metals recycling facility.
• The Dayton mining project is estimated to yield $400 million over a six-year lifespan.
• The company holds nearly 700,000 ounces of gold and over 7 million ounces of silver.

Operational Updates

Fuels:

• Waste wood to fuel technology yields 140 gasoline gallon equivalents per ton of wood.
• Agreements with Hex’s Biomass and RenFuel enhance production capabilities.
• Comstock has signed five international license agreements and is selecting a site for its first fully owned refinery.
• Five international licensees are commencing site construction, contributing upfront and engineering fees.

Metals:

• Focus on recycling solar panels, targeting 100,000 tons per year at the first facility.
• The facility aims to produce clean aluminum, glass, and silver, eliminating waste materials.
• Large customer contracts are being secured, emphasizing zero-landfill certification.

Mining:

• Comstock controls nearly 12 square miles of mineral-rich properties in Northern Nevada.
• Plans to synchronize mining and reclamation efforts to enhance land use post-mining.

Future Outlook

• Comstock plans to establish two high-growth publicly traded companies in renewable sectors.
• A Series A offering for the fuels subsidiary is planned, with strategic investor participation.
• The metals business is set for global expansion, aiming to become Nevada’s largest silver producer.

Q&A Highlights

• The discussion emphasized Comstock’s transition from silver mining to renewable resources.
• CEO Corrado DeGasperis highlighted the company’s systemic approach to sustainable innovation.
• The strategy focuses on accelerating commercialization of impactful technologies in metals and fuels.

Readers are invited to refer to the full transcript for more detailed insights.

Full transcript - Lytham Partners 2025 Industrials & Basic Materials Investor Summit:

Robert Blum, Managing Partner, Lithium Partners: Alright. Hello, and welcome everyone to the Comstock fireside chat. My name is Robert Blum, managing partner at Lithium Partners. And today, I’m pleased to be moderating a q and a discussion with Corrado DeGasperis, Comstock’s executive chairman and chief executive officer. Comstock trades under the ticker l o d e on the NYSE American.

Corrado, welcome.

Corrado DeGasperis, Executive Chairman and CEO, Comstock: Robert, thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Robert Blum, Managing Partner, Lithium Partners: Fantastic. Let’s jump right in. Talk a little bit about the origins of Comstock and and what inspired the company’s focus on on this technology development.

Corrado DeGasperis, Executive Chairman and CEO, Comstock: Absolutely. So let me let’s start with the the Comstock origin, then I’ll talk a little bit about how I segued into it. But, you know, the Comstock was one of the largest silver discoveries in 1859, shockingly producing, you know, almost 200,000,000 ounces of silver and over 8,000,000 ounces of gold. But the real story underlying the district was all of the industrial innovation that was required to get that much gold and silver, you know, out of the mines. Right?

So it really became a hub of industrial mining innovation and and is still a recognized national landmark to that end. But, you know, in the nineteen hundreds, things, wrapped up with the old timers, and the district was pretty defunct and, you know, dilapidated, for lack of a better word. It was started to revive itself maybe more as a a tourist attraction. And I had my origin was I spent the first part of my career turning around a global industrial graphite company that was frankly the most, largest one of the largest renewable supply chains in the world, taking petroleum coke from the industrial oil and gas refining process, converting it into synthetic graphite, and then making electrodes that recycled scrap metal and electric arc furnace. And so, you know, my my origin was that there really was never a conflict between practical deployable technology, clean energy, clean processes, renewables, and making money.

And so, I guess because we turned that company around, we restructured it, we recapitalized it, we systematized it, which means we took it from being a siloed, you know, country company, independently run series of fiefdoms into one system. And by doing that, we we unlocked not only a tremendous amount of capacity and profitability, but then we unlocked all of the innovation that was stuck inside those silos. The last five years I was there, we filed 700 new patents and launched, five new products into the market getting recognition as the top 100 commercialized products five years in a row. So but but somehow that dubbed me as a turnaround guy and and, you know, in the metals and mining sector. And so I got a call to see if I could help, you know, revitalize, reinstitute, you know, this this mining district.

And I didn’t really know anything about mining or or gold and silver for that matter, but we we did the same thing. You know, we we reorganized it. We recapitalized it. We proved out the resources. We put it into production, and we’ve got national, state, and local recognition for our stewardship, our environmental restoration and reclamations, and and proving out, you know, the resource.

So I went to the board about five years ago, which is really the answer to your question. And I said, look. We we we’ve fixed broken companies a few times now. Why don’t we take this platform of innovation, this platform of of systems thinking, and and and invest in new renewable technologies? And therein lies how Comstock fuels and Comstock metal recycling was born, you know, very very much with the idea that a a platform, you know, with the systemic mindset could could make major impact, you know, on new businesses.

Robert Blum, Managing Partner, Lithium Partners: Yeah. That’s a a fascinating history there. And and and maybe let’s let’s dive into each one of these. Right? You mentioned the mining already.

You mentioned fuels and metals. Yeah. We’ll go into each one of them in just a minute, but but, you know, maybe expand upon that commonality really that runs through each of them and what drives drives this business here.

Corrado DeGasperis, Executive Chairman and CEO, Comstock: Absolutely. I mean, the challenge that the the board made to me and I made to the board is can we elevate and operate something that’s truly sustainable? That word used to irk me because so many people used it so many different ways. But, you know, it’s something that’s truly sustainable. And and so we we looked at technologies that could take literally take carbon from waste wood.

I mean, the initial thought was how do we how do we make a mine sustainable? You know? And we were mocked. You know? Like, there’s a finite resource in the ground, Corrado.

It’s gonna it’s gonna be expended. It’s gonna be depleted. You know? And I said, well, that’s not good enough. We we can think better than that.

You know? And so the the initial idea was taking these materials from waste electrification products. You know? Could we could we could we get it out of batteries? Could we get it out of solar panels?

And then and then we also explored, could we get, you know, value carbon out of waste wood? And therein was born, you know, this wood to fuel technology, and therein was born this, you know, waste metals, waste electrification products to silver technology. And I’ll tell you, one thing that we’re very proud of is we now have a platform where we believe in the metal recycling. We have created a silver mine. People are calling it an urban mine, but a silver mine that never depletes and continues to produce, and an oil well that never depletes and continues to produce.

In both instances, they improve the environment. They don’t hurt the environment. Hence, no conflict, right, between doing good and making money. And the mining assets, we we think we have a we we’ve circled back around after, you know, going two for two with with fuels and metals. We’ve circled back around, and we think we have an idea on how to make that sustainable, which we we can talk about, you know, later on in the in the interview.

Robert Blum, Managing Partner, Lithium Partners: Well, let let’s let’s go into the fuels first. Right? So let’s let’s maybe talk about some of the the you know, where you stand, some of the key agreements that you have. You you’ve laid out a number of objectives for 2025 for those that maybe haven’t seen it. Talk talk through each one of those.

Corrado DeGasperis, Executive Chairman and CEO, Comstock: Absolutely. So in fuels, the core technology is to take a ton of dry waste wood, you know, from a lumber mill, from a pulp and paper mill, from, you know, anywhere, really, forestry residuals. Take and there’s abundances of it. So when we when we looked at this supply chain, we said, what’s the bottleneck? Where’s the constraint in this macro fuel system?

And shockingly, in the renewables, it was feedstock. It wasn’t it wasn’t it wasn’t anything other than there isn’t a sufficiency of affordable feedstock. People were using very expensive vegetable oils. They were competing with the food chain. So our technology takes a a ton of waste wood, which has two major components to it, cellulose, which is carbohydrates and sugars, which most people are familiar with, and lignin, which is a dense carbon sort of protector of the wood that most people are not familiar with.

It was common practice to be able to extract cellulose and make pulp and make paper and make alcohols, even ethanols with that, but it was not a practice at all to do anything with the lignin. So we cracked the code on the lignin. We were able to liquefy it with what we call an organic solvent, an organosolve process, and create a a a material that we call biolium, which which is, you know, the functional equivalent to petroleum. And what happened, the skinny of it, was people went from an industry standard of 45 to 50 gasoline gallon equivalents per ton of wood to us catapulting to doubling that number to 100 because we were using all the wood versus less than half the wood and then increasing that to one twenty five, and now we’re at one forty. So this is a monstrous breakthrough in yields.

It’s not only the highest yielding process on earth for for waste wood to fuel, it’s also, carbon negative. It’s very, very low carbon impact. And now with the new feedstocks we’re introducing, it goes to carbon negative. So with the abundance of wood, with the ability to extract a 40 gasoline gallon equivalents, and with the ability to actually take abundance as a feedstock and grow purpose grown feedstocks, we really created a situation now where we have oil wells that never stop producing. And so we signed a critical agreement with, Hex’s biomass, which has a purpose grown fuel stock.

Corn yields, like, 10 barrels per acre per year of of oils. Hexus yields a hundred barrels per acres per year. So so we we’ve unlocked this incredible natural resource, you know, that decarbonizes as you go. We also signed an agreement with RenFuel, which is a company that takes this lignin, this crude lignin that we produce, and it esterifies it, makes it into an oil that blends immediately with vegetable oil. And lastly, we signed an agreement with the National Renewable Energy Lab.

They they’re they’re recently highlighting that it’s one of the most promising projects that they have because not only is this the best source to make sustainable aviation fuel, they have technologies to increase the yield and break what they call the blend wall to to eventually be able to not have to blend sustainable aviation fuel with Jet a, but but make it a drop in fuel. So it’s going, remarkably well. We signed five international license agreements. We’ve gotten grants from the state of Oklahoma. We’ve gotten bond allocations from the state of Oklahoma.

We’re selecting a site, hopefully, with the next few weeks for our first fully owned refinery, and we’re integrating the supply chain, you know, from from soup to not. So it’s an extraordinary thing that’s happening here. We didn’t just commercialize the technology. We’ve essentially integrated a series of technologies, then a series of companies, and we’re creating essentially a new standard for oil, which doesn’t compete with other energy sources, complements and enhances other energy sources. You know?

So the notion of making countries energy independent or, frankly, making The US energy dominant is right in our right in our bull’s eye, right in our wheelhouse.

Robert Blum, Managing Partner, Lithium Partners: I had to ask for for for most companies, probably digging, more into, into just the fuels, but there is, two other areas as well. So in the interest of time, we’ll we’ll sort of move on to the metals. Again, talk about sort of the technology, the process, the facilities, and and the objectives here for 2025 within the the metals.

Corrado DeGasperis, Executive Chairman and CEO, Comstock: Absolutely. So, you know, coming from a silver mining background, we were we had good metallurgical professionals. We had good, you know, mining engineers and geologists, and we were looking at what could we do better, what could we do more. We thought initially taking, you know, lithium ion battery and and recycling it would would make some sense, know, getting some of the lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese, you know, out of there. But but we decided that it was a crowded space.

It was in a very early space, and there there was still a lot of technology development to go. So we pivoted to recycling solar panels, which seemed to be missed by most. Not only were solar panels supposed to last twenty five to thirty years and were only lasting twelve to fifteen, but nobody had the capacity to scale for the amount of panels that are now end of life and coming out of the market. It’s creating a crisis. California went one step further and prohibited the use of these panels to going into landfills.

So as we’re sitting here in Nevada right on the California border, we we built a facility that can recycle solar panels. And the technology, Robert, the real claim to fame, the real defend differentiator is that all of these products, be it a solar panel, be it a battery, you name it, they all have these laminates and plastics and glues that really make it impossible to reuse the minerals if they’re contaminated with those substances. So what our technology does very efficiently is it eliminates cleanly the laminates, the plastics, the glues. You know, one person said to me once, you know, the hardest thing to recycle is a milk carton because that that that stingy, nasty little film on the outside of it, that waxy plastic. And and that’s the issue exactly in the industry.

So we’re able to eliminate the laminates, produce clean aluminum, clean glass, and then what we’re shocked by is, like, a super silver rich tailings. And so today, we’re we’re getting paid to take these end of life panels. Some people call that a tipping fee. It’s an environmental service fee. We’re we’re taking that material.

We’re we’re reprocessing it, and then we’re selling the aluminum, selling the glass, selling the silver. And and in our first facility, we expect to do a hundred thousand tons per year, which will be remarkably profitable. $50.60, 70,000,000 in cash flow from a 12 to $15,000,000 investment. But but as exciting as that is, one facility would make us the second largest producer of silver in the state of Nevada. Two facilities would make us the largest producer.

Might as well be the largest producer in the country because Nevada leads in in silver mining, and there’s no stopping from there. So, legitimately, a silver mine that never stops producing.

Robert Blum, Managing Partner, Lithium Partners: Talk about cup just a couple of the, the objectives here for 2025 as investors are looking into side of the equation? Walk walk through just a couple of the key milestones, they should be paying attention to.

Corrado DeGasperis, Executive Chairman and CEO, Comstock: Absolutely. For for fuels, we are closing on a series a offering right into the subsidiary. Marathon Petroleum announced two weeks ago that they’re investing. They have invested directly into that subsidiary, and now we have a handful of strategics rallying around to close the series a, hopefully, right here during the second quarter, selecting the first site for Oklahoma and then initiating the project financing to build that first first site for fuels. So we’re in a very exciting ramp up mode.

Also, we have five international licensees who are breaking ground on sites, and they pay us upfront fees for our license. They pay us engineering fees, then they pay us royalty fees. So we have a a remarkably robust, you know, licensing agreements insofar as economics are concerned. On the metal side, we submitted permits for our industry scale. We’re running three shifts full on our small scale facility right now.

The biggest the biggest milestones will be, a, getting the, large customers. We’re getting almost all of the you know, if you look at the top 10 generators of solar panels, largest utility companies in the country, the largest clean energy companies in the country. We’re we’re locking them all up as our customers, frankly, because we’re the only solution that, a, can scale to their size and, b, is certified as an end of life zero landfill solution. So none of the materials we take in will end up in a landfill. So announcing those customers, announcing, the completion of our permits, getting the first industry scale up and running, that’s 2025.

So, you know, really, we’re in a fast growth mode for both of these both of these businesses.

Robert Blum, Managing Partner, Lithium Partners: And and and, obviously, then circling back to to where you started here with the mining, you know, for for those not familiar on the the silver gold, just sort of walk through the operations that you still have and and how you intend to utilize those assets.

Corrado DeGasperis, Executive Chairman and CEO, Comstock: Absolutely. So we have almost 12 square miles of mineralized contiguous properties in Northern Nevada. It’s literally the Comstock Lode, hence our namesake Comstock Inc, hence our trading symbol LODE. But we have two resources that total almost 700,000 ounces of gold and over 7,000,000 ounces of silver on just a small portion of the district. The second resort the first resource is the Lucerne.

The second resource is the Dayton. We’re excited about both those resources. The economics were attractive to us at the 1,800 to, let’s say, $2,000 an ounce gold. Gold’s over $3,000 an ounce today. Silver’s still lagging, but at $33 an ounce.

The cash flow from Dayton alone would be 400,000,000 over a six year mine life. That’s net of everything. So there’s a hidden asset there that people aren’t aware of, ironically or at least not valuing. It’s incredible resource. We have third party technical reports on these resources, so third party validations.

And we’re fully infrastructure and permitted. We’ve mined before, so this is not an exploration stage mindset. Last thing I’ll say is we challenge the teams that they have to do better than just mining profitably, And they’ve come up with some extraordinary plans because of our location, because of our proximity to Virginia City and Carson City and Reno, where there could be remarkable postproductive uses to land in an area that’s just exploding industrially. And when Tesla came to Northern Nevada, it seemed like everybody and their mother wanted to come to Northern Nevada. So what we’re doing now is we’re synchronizing mine plans that mine and reclaim at the same time, something we’ve gotten awards for, by the way, in the Comstock so that when we’re done mining, instead of having a big thirty year liability, you know, we have an incredibly valuable and productive asset.

So those plans aren’t final yet, but they’re in motion, and we’re excited about all three of these, of these segments, if you will.

Robert Blum, Managing Partner, Lithium Partners: Fantastic. You know, in some of your your discussions here, conference calls, press releases, you’ve sort of talked about, ultimately, your goal is to create two high growth publicly traded companies. Right? A a renewable metals and a mining company, and and and sort of a renewable fuels company there. Talk talk sort of through what the vision is bigger picture for this company longer term and and and how everything you just described here comes together.

Corrado DeGasperis, Executive Chairman and CEO, Comstock: Yeah. I I love to. So I you know, we we have this very systemic mindset, right, where we build systems and and and we really focus extraordinarily on a singular goal. The overriding goal of the company is to accelerate the commercialization of these breakthrough impactful technologies. You can see we’re doing that with fuels.

We’re doing that with metals. And this this acceleration of commercialization has to do with the what we call the valley of death. You know? Hugely impactful ideas, great technologies that get stuck, you know, on a continuum from one to nine, the technology readiness levels continuing from one to nine. They get stuck at three, four, and five.

And and the reason for that is not because the ideas aren’t great, not because the founders or inventors aren’t geniuses, not because they ultimately couldn’t be economically feasible. It just takes a breath of to cross the finish line. You know, we’re not playing golf. Right? We’re playing football.

You know, you need a full team to get over the finish line. And so that valley of death, unfortunately, kills destroys capital and kills companies un unjustifiably, unnecessarily. So what we did is we stepped into scenarios where there was incredible competency, incredible experiences necessary, we would say, but not sufficient to get to the goal line or over the goal line, and then we complement those. And the only guidepost we put on ourselves is let’s do something meaningful. Let’s do something important.

So to create literally an oil well that never stops producing, to create a silver mine that never stops producing in the at the net simultaneously impacting the environment is meaningful. So I guess now and and we’re very humble about this, but we’ve been so successful with these two businesses that the capital that’s being attracted to them, especially fuels, is saying, we don’t understand why you have three different businesses. We don’t understand metals and mining. Wouldn’t it be better, Corrado, if it was a stand alone fuels company? We’re very excited about that.

And I said, yes. It seems like at this point, it would be better. We’re getting a tremendous amount of focused capital interested in fuels. I know that if if some of the resource investors understood, you know, what seems to be under the cover right now for metals and mining, we have an extraordinary we’re about to unlock an extraordinary precious metal resource. You know, core core mining is the largest silver miner in Nevada.

They produce over 4,000,000 ounces a year. But every year that they produce those 4,000,000 ounces, their resources deplete by more than that number. Our our resources don’t deplete. In fact, they keep growing overwhelmingly. And so a a public Nevada based public company, Comstock, symbol l o d e, that that really unlocks an innovation in terms of metals and precious metals is super exciting.

And then an Oklahoma based fuels company, also public, that unlocks a new standard in oil, I think it’s something we’re gonna feel proud of. And I want I wanna emphasize to the audience that we have fully dedicated teams. I’m not running either one of these businesses. They’re they’re all loaded with top technologists, top engineers, top experienced seasoned executives that are commercializing global supply chains. Most people see fuels as a a remarkable global supply chain, and they see metals as a regional remarkable regional play.

It’s not a regional play. It’s gonna go global, and there’s nothing stopping it. So it’s really, really we we feel very proud of the teams, and we’re very excited about what’s what’s about to happen here.

Robert Blum, Managing Partner, Lithium Partners: Fantastic. Well, again, fascinating opportunity here. I I guess maybe any closing remarks before we, got, just a couple minutes left?

Corrado DeGasperis, Executive Chairman and CEO, Comstock: I would just say that I would just say that we’re we’re quickening. You know? It it, you know, it always seems like it takes forever to do these things. You know? You’re not you’re not just commercializing one niche of one technology into one segment of one market.

You know? We’re we’re we’re consolidating and integrating our true global system of technologies, of competencies, frankly, of companies working together. And but but we have reached a critical mass in the context or readiness, if maybe it’s a better way to say it. We’re we’re actually commercializing. So you’re gonna see the metals revenue pop, you know, you know, meaningfully.

You’re going to see the fuels, contracts commercialization partners pop meaningfully. And in the Fuel’s case, that’ll probably be kicked off by a series a, offering that will have participants that we could only be remarkably proud of being part of our system or we we become part of their system, however you think of it. So that’s coming, you know, April, May, June, July. It’s it’s it’s it’s happening very quickly.

Robert Blum, Managing Partner, Lithium Partners: Fantastic. Well, Carado, thank you so much for, your participation in the, discussion here today. Thank you to everybody who’s watching right now.

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