Earnings call transcript: Comstock Mining Q4 2024 misses EPS, stock falls

Comstock Mining Inc. (LODE) reported its Q4 2024 earnings, revealing a significant net loss of $53 million or $3.21 per share for the year, missing the EPS forecast of -$0.03. Revenues, however, grew to $3 million from $1.3 million in 2023, aligning with InvestingPro data showing impressive revenue growth of 117% over the last twelve months. Following the announcement, Comstock’s stock plummeted 21.31% to $2.4, with further decline in aftermarket trading. With a beta of 1.59, the stock typically exhibits higher volatility than the broader market.

Key Takeaways

• Comstock reported a substantial net loss, missing EPS expectations.
• Revenue increased significantly, doubling from the previous year.
• The stock experienced a sharp decline, nearing its 52-week low.
• Innovations in solar panel recycling and biofuel production were highlighted.
• Strategic partnerships and financing activities were emphasized.

Company Performance

Comstock Mining demonstrated notable revenue growth in 2024, reaching $3 million compared to $1.3 million in 2023. Despite this increase, the company reported a significant net loss, reflecting ongoing financial challenges. According to InvestingPro analysis, the company maintains a healthy current ratio of 2.45 and operates with a moderate debt-to-equity ratio of 0.24. Comstock continues to focus on its metals and fuels segments, showcasing advancements in solar panel recycling and biofuel production. InvestingPro subscribers have access to 12 additional key insights about LODE’s financial health and growth prospects.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $3 million, up from $1.3 million in 2023.
• Net loss: $53 million or $3.21 per share for the full year.
• Cash position: $1 million at year-end.
• Financing: Raised $17.6 million, with an additional $5 million from a convertible note post-year-end.

Earnings vs. Forecast

Comstock’s actual EPS was substantially lower than the forecasted -$0.03, indicating a larger-than-expected financial loss. The revenue forecast of $700,100 was surpassed, reflecting positive sales momentum.

Market Reaction

Following the earnings announcement, Comstock’s stock fell 21.31% to $2.4, with an additional 2.65% drop in aftermarket trading to $2.57. This decline places the stock near its 52-week low of $1.25, significantly below its 52-week high of $10.1. InvestingPro data reveals the stock has experienced a -67% year-to-date return, with an overall Financial Health Score rated as ’WEAK’ at 1.73 out of 5, suggesting continued challenges ahead.

Outlook & Guidance

Comstock aims to achieve $2.5 million in revenue from its metals segment in 2025, with a break-even target by the end of 2026. The company plans a $6 million capital expenditure in 2025 and is working on closing a Series A financing for its fuels segment by Q2 2025.

Executive Commentary

CEO Corrado De Gasparis highlighted the company’s advancements, stating, "We have truly created an unprecedented, extremely high yielding, extremely low carbon and in many scenarios, carbon negative sustainable global biofuel system." COO Billy McCarthy emphasized growth potential, saying, "Additional equity capital buys growth. It makes the pie bigger for everyone."

Risks and Challenges

• Financial losses and negative EPS may impact investor confidence.
• Potential dilution from ongoing financing activities.
• Market volatility affecting stock performance.
• Execution risks associated with new technologies and partnerships.
• Regulatory and competitive pressures in the renewable energy sector.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about international expansion in metals recycling and the company’s financing strategy. Executives also discussed the potential spin-off of Comstock Fuels, reflecting strategic considerations for future growth.

Full transcript - Comstock Mining Inc (LODE) Q4 2024:

Trevor Brucato, Investor Relations Moderator, RB Milestone Group: Welcome investors, analysts and other stakeholders to Comstock’s twenty twenty four Annual Results and Business Update. This is Trevor Brucato with RB Milestone Group, Comstock’s U. S.-based Investor Relations firm. Comstock is listed on the NYSE American under the symbol L O D E. And I’m pleased to have with me the company’s Chief Executive Officer and Executive Chair, Corrado De Gasparis and Chief Operating Officer, Billy McCarthy.

I’d like to first thank those who submitted questions during registration. Most of those will be addressed in management’s prepared remarks. If you have any new questions throughout the presentation, please submit them in the Q and A module and we’ll do the best we can to get to all of them. Today’s presentation may contain forward looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that may be out of Comstock’s control and should not be construed as a recommendation or solicitation to buy or sell any security. For the company’s full disclaimer, please visit compstock.inc.

Also, RB Milestone is not a registered investment advisor or broker dealer. For more information on us, please visit rbmilestone.com. Lastly, this presentation is being recorded today, 03/06/2025, and will be made available on the company’s website at comstock.inc shortly after today’s event. And now, it is my pleasure to turn it over to Comstock’s Executive Chair and CEO, Corrado De Gasparis. Corrado, the stage is yours.

Corrado De Gasparis, CEO and Executive Chair, Comstock Inc.: Thanks, Trevor, and hello all, and welcome to Comstock’s twenty twenty four annual update. I have no doubt that in the very near future, when we look back on our achievements from last year, 2024 will have marked the turning point of almost everything we’re doing and certainly so for Metals and Fuels. As of today, both companies have achieved their previously published objectives for 2024. And let me recap it for Comstock Metals first, where Fortunado and the team have advanced our solar cycle recycling technology all the way through TRL7 and it’s now fully operating. This facility was designed, deployed and commissioned just under a year ago and quickly ramped up with a now dedicated team of 13 full time employees.

The plan has proven it can recover 100% of all the metal, glass and minerals, especially the Silver Ridge tailings. This has not only created a tremendous competitive advantage by enabling us to offer a zero landfill solution to our customers, but it also increases our revenues beyond the tipping fees by almost 50%. We were very conservative in that notion of offtake until we knew we could produce those products cleanly, completely. So now we’re rapidly expanding our existing customer base with industry leaders that hopefully will soon be able to disclose who they are to you. Adding to that, in 2024, the team also finalized the design and site selection for our first industry scale facility and submitted the Nevada County and State permits for approvals.

We already received the county permit that allows us to efficiently store panels and this means that the state permitting wait times do not meaningfully slow down our ability to secure and receive orders from our customers. Although our largest customers are in the Southwest United States region, in 2024, not only did we secure customers throughout the Southwest Region, we also won business far beyond, including securing and receiving panels from Florida, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and even Alberta, Canada, just to name a few. And just to be crystal clear, we’re now receiving panels at the facility every single week. In 2024, we also secured offtake revenue arrangements for all of those clean product lines, that is the aluminum scraps, the glass pearls and those silver rich tailings. Our 2024 metal segment performance was right where we hoped it would be and we are now realizing and positioning for all types of exceptional revenue growth in 2025, the intake revenue, the offtake revenue and even decommissioning services well before we commission the larger facility.

I’ll talk more about that after Billy’s review of the financials. But suffice to say now that we have a legitimate view of how we’re engineering and operating what is effectively a world class silver mine, one that uses solar panel waste as its feedstock ores and one that effectively never depletes. Let me turn to Comstock Fuels. Many of you have already acknowledged in speaking to me that you realized in 2024 that fuels has become something far greater or was becoming something far greater than what most people expected, understood or frankly even conceived was possible. Those conversations bring me joy because we’ve always talked about our systemic notion and it means a lot of things, profound things, but we were building something that was always intended to expand beyond the legal borders of the actual company, the actual legal entity.

And I have to take a deep breath before I run through 2024 on fuels with you because we did a lot. During 2024, our teams have integrated critical technologies. They integrated critical partners and even geographies into a truly new and unprecedented Biolaan enterprise. And what I’m about to explain really tells us why, because we first assembled our system from a foundation of new lignocellulosic IP that was developed in large part and consolidated further by our team and then by identifying, aligning, securing and integrating an expansive portfolio of the world’s leading intellectual properties, as well as the world’s leading intellects, the scientists, the engineers, the technologies and the people and their teams who together so far have executed exclusive and near exclusive agreements that either dramatically derisk or push our already industry leading yields of 125 gasoline gallon equivalents per ton of dry wood all the way up to 140 gasoline gallon equivalent tons per ton of dry I’m sorry, gasoline gallon equivalent per ton of dry wood, which is easily double our next competitor. Nobody is taking waste wood, woody biomass, the most abundant feedstocks on the planet Earth and unleashing that carbon to this magnitude in liquid fuels, nobody.

We secured the lowest cost and most abundant feedstock. We secured the highest leading and yielding processes, certainly the lowest or some of the lowest carbon impact or CI scores, which means highest revenue potential, while lining up strategic capital, strategic offtake and what’s turning out to be very tactical and strategic, which is jurisdictional grants and supports from states like Oklahoma and Wisconsin and others now lining up to commit to us. But it doesn’t stop there. The team also executed international licenses for engineering services, for process technology and equity agreements for already five biolum refineries, including Australia, Vietnam and Pakistan, with New Zealand and Malaysia right on their heels, right in their crosshairs. And in addition to inventing, integrating and now deploying that platform globally, now deploying that platform globally, The team has secured $3,000,000 in incentive awards from Oklahoma’s Quick Action Closing Fund and already earned the first million dollars by committing to Oklahoma as our headquarters.

We’ve also completed preliminary engineering now. Our chief engineer has been working his butt off. We’ve completed the engineering for our first commercial demonstration facility. And we’re very, very close to picking the first site in Oklahoma, which will then earn us a second million dollars from that Oklahoma grant. Remarkably, our team also has secured $152,000,000 allocation of qualified private activity bonds from Oklahoma State Treasurer.

This tax free bond allocation is a huge, very huge and very rare allocation and not something that’s done lightly. The state only gets a certain amount allocated to them to then turn around and allocate to the opportunities that they want to be active in their state, but our guys got it. Together, our team and Marathon Petroleum’s team working tirelessly, I can tell you, for the last six, seven, eight weeks, also closed on the first tranche of our strategic Series A investment with both a cash component, dollars 1,000,000 and the contribution of Marathon’s state of the art renewable fuel demonstration facility in Madison, Wisconsin, which we valued at $13,000,000 with them that we believe will soon integrate with our Wausau, Wisconsin capacity to create a fully integrated pilot system that goes from validating, testing and receiving feedstocks in Wausau to producing barrels of oil and fuel up to two barrels a day in Madison. This enables us to obtain ASTM product approvals, EPA pathway approvals and even product sales. It will massively shorten the lead times to sales for our Oklahoma facility as product approvals would be accelerated.

But probably the largest value that seems to be misunderstood regarding this world class facility is that it would have taken us years. If we could have even done it, it would have taken us years to establish a facility like this. And I want to tell you that we’ve tried on a number of occasions to plan and solve for how do we get Wausau producing this kind of oil, this kind of fuel, two barrels a day? How do we do it? And the answer was, it wasn’t possible in that facility.

When I walked into the Madison facility, I think it’s ridiculous that we have been trying to do it in the Wassaw facility. It’s so much more expansive and involved. But if we had to build those things ourselves, even if we were fully funded on day one, we wouldn’t have been able to do it. It would have taken years. And now we have it today.

I mean, we have it today. I mean, I’ll be working there all next week. These last two accomplishments cannot be understated. Marathon has not only agreed to invest in fuels, Comstock Fuels, not only agreed to collaborate on biofuel technology by committing to joint product development agreement with us and agreeing to offtake for our first facility, but they also capped our fuels valuation for this part of the transaction with them at $700,000,000 7 hundred million dollars The agreement reads and accurately represents that value as a cap for them. But you all need to understand, but to me, it represents the floor for everyone else because you can be damn sure that Marathon, after two years of incredibly hard and good work, often being pretty patient with us, frankly, and culminating in these four landmark transactions, is going to get a discount from us at $700,000,000 Not on $700,000,000 at $700,000,000 So Marathon’s fourteen million dollars investment at $700,000,000 is 2% of Comstock Fuels.

We’re very, very proud of that. And both parties are going to be very, very happy with that. We plan on finishing the fuel Series A during the second quarter. And then we’ll be in a whole different state of reality as a company. We’ve truly created an unprecedented, extremely high yielding, extremely low carbon and in many scenarios, especially with HEXUS onboard, carbon negative sustainable global biofuel system that now includes owning this fully integrated pilot that can produce oils and fuels and more importantly, the systems designed to scale.

In every way, it’s designed to scale in the abundance and availability of feedstock, in the engineering of the refineries, in the modular scalability in the refineries, in the licensing and deployment with partners, enabling us to effectively create endless oil wells that until now were seemingly hidden in plain sight. I don’t think anybody other than maybe a handful of our people who spend twenty hours a day just thinking about nothing but this system appreciates what’s about to happen with it. Just quickly with mining. We partially monetized the Northern District claims with nearly $3,000,000 in cash. Those $3,000,000 cash proceeds, which we’ve already received from leasing those Northern claims midway through ’20 ’20 ’3 through the sale and we got another $1,000,000 that was put down towards a nearly $3,000,000 sales price will result and end up in us monetizing these, let’s call them, non producing, non productive assets for $6,000,000 These are claims to the North that we never and still have no plans and I don’t think we’d ever have any plans, frankly, for developing.

During 2024 though, we did update our preliminary mine and reclamation plan for the Dayton using $2,300 gold. The cash flows are robust. The net cash flows over a six year period from this one resource is nearly $250,000,000 It goes well over $2,900 today. That easily adds another $120,000,000 to that cash flow model if we didn’t change the cutoff. If you raise the price, you’re going to lower the cutoff.

Even if we didn’t lower the cutoff, meaning no additional ounces, we’d still get another $120,000,000 added to the cash flow. And our intention is to monetize these assets in a manner that unlocks the most value. So that could be a sale, it could be a joint venture, we could put them into production. As far as we’re concerned, we have every option on the table. The mining segment covers its own costs.

We have a free option on gold and silver. We couldn’t be more bullish about those metals. The spin off could also bring maximum attention back onto the metals and the precious metals in our portfolio, understanding that Comstock Inc, and I’m not saying we’re changing the name, don’t jump ahead. Comstock Inc. Effectively is Comstock Metals with the spin.

Just like I said in my shareholder letter in January, we end up with a Nevada based metals and mining company and an Oklahoma based fuel company. So I didn’t mean to confuse people. I know that there are some details that are still missing, try to fill in as many of the gaps as we can today. But what I want to do is turn it over to Billy to walk us through our financial progress during Q4 and the year, put a lot of stuff behind us in 2024, got a lot of things that’s complemented in 2025, will give a little bit of financial expectation for 2025 as well, then he’ll turn it back to me to talk about the outlook for the businesses for the rest of the way. Billy?

Billy McCarthy, Chief Operating Officer, Comstock Inc.: Sorry about that. So, thanks, Cara. I’m glad to be here to share financial update and talk some more about how we’re positioning for the year ahead with regards to capital. All the 2024 results discussed here can be found in today’s Form 10 ks filing, which you can find on our website, comstock.incinvestors. On February 24, we effected a one for 10 reverse split of the load common stock.

As reported on our 10 ks filing, there are currently 24,238,453 shares outstanding with $245,000,000 shares authorized. We want to say thank you to all the shareholders for the overwhelming support in approving this action, which is critical to our ability to go fast, building more sustainable value in 2025 and beyond. Our revenues grew in 2024 to $3,000,000 from $1,300,000 in 2023. Dollars ’4 hundred and ’1 thousand of that increase related to operations of our solar panel recycling facility, which was commissioned in the first half of twenty twenty four and our decommissioning services business, which started to hit stride at the end of Q3. At year end, there was an additional $152,000 in deferred revenue, where we build and receive the cash for solar panel recycling, but we’ve not fully met the accounting requirements for recognizing the revenue.

Company wide, we reported an overall net loss of $53,000,000 or $3.21 per share for the full year. There were several non recurring one time items reflected in this performance, which include a $12,200,000 reclassification of contributions made to GenMat, which were reclassed from investment to R and D expense. Now, the fact is the research and development we did with GenMat over the past several years has strengthened our conviction that generative AI will prove a game changing innovation driver for material science with direct applications to our commercial businesses, including Comstock Fuels and Comstock Metals. We’re continuing our R and D efforts with a small internal team, standing on the shoulders of the work we did with Genmat and continuing to expand on the potential for our investments. We’re confident that there will be a payoff for these efforts in the future, possibly through contributions to our existing businesses, but also potentially the development of one or more new commercial opportunities.

There was an 8,700,000 write down of intangible assets related to previous work we did on a battery recycling system. This system was developed in 2021 and 2022 prior

Corrado De Gasparis, CEO and Executive Chair, Comstock Inc.: to

Billy McCarthy, Chief Operating Officer, Comstock Inc.: our pivot to solar panel recycling and silver extraction. We maintain that system as a hedge to our developments. We believe the new system was far superior and last year we proved that with the commercial success of the demonstration facility. When it became clear just how much better our current system operates, it didn’t make sense to continue carrying the old technology any longer. There was a $711,000 unrealized loss related to Green Lion.

We update our carrying values based on other transactions that Green Lion does, which are beyond our control. We monitor this position very closely. And while we have high expectations for the Green Lion team, this exposure is not core to our plans currently and we continue actively soliciting buyers for our position. On the positive side, we had an $804,000 gain from the sale of mining assets on the Northern Comstock. When we break it down by segment, Comstock Fuels reported a net loss of $5,300,000 down from a $7,100,000 loss in 2023 on reduced R and D expenses.

Comstock Metals reported a net loss of $3,000,000 excluding that adjustment to intangible assets that I mentioned before, which compared to a $1,900,000 loss in 2023. This is from increased operating costs at the demonstration facility and development costs for our planned scale up. Comstock Mining reported net income of $1,600,000 improving on a $500,000 loss in 2023, driven by increased lease revenue and the $804,000 gain from the sale of the Northern Comstock. Overall, we ended the year with $1,000,000 in cash. After spending $13,900,000 for operating activities, a $317,000 increase from the prior year and $6,500,000 for investing activities compared to a $3,600,000 proceeds from investments in 2023.

Cash from financing activities provided $17,600,000 in 2024, primarily from the issuance of common stock and debt instruments convertible into common stock. This is up from $11,300,000 raised in 2023. Subsequent to year end, on 01/10/2025, we sold a convertible note receiving $5,000,000 of proceeds on January 13 with an additional $5,000,000 in proceeds coming next week. This transaction stabilizes our cash position for the short term as we continue to advance our plans forward. A few key takeaways to highlight.

We’ve been extremely diligent when it comes to managing our expenses. You can see we’ve significantly expanded our team and our capabilities this year with only a small $317,000 increase in our operating spend. This is not luck, it requires an organization wide commitment to doing only the most important things necessary to achieve our goals. We’ve been talking about subsidiary and project level financing for a long time. We’ve told you we believe this will lead to accelerated value recognition.

Our recent news on the investment into Comstock Fuels by Marathon Petroleum, the planned Series A funding round, should give a better, more clear understanding about what we mean. This is the way forward. None of it would be possible without the significant and sustained technical and operational progress our teams have made. We’ve set an incredible foundation for the next phase of growth. As we look to 2025, we continue to remain focused on the sale of non core assets, we’re actively engaged with markets to that end.

Our expectations on the non mining real estate and water rights portfolio have not changed. We see $50,000,000 of proceeds coming to Comstock and we believe we’ll have a final deal in place this year. And that’s separate from our investments in the Silver Springs Opportunity Fund where we see even more significant upside in the coming years. On Green Lion, we believe our position is worth $20,000,000 Now, you have to consider that Green Lion is a private company and we’re limited on what info we can share. They don’t really get a lot of press coverage.

But let me say, I don’t know of another battery recycler actually producing and selling cathode materials, connecting a fully domestic supply chain and I think they’re extremely well positioned for the current moment and people are starting to take notice. On fuels, the completion of the A round financing will ensure sufficient runway for fuels to continue to grow and develop highly valuable commercial projects in The U. S. And across the world, while reducing the cash demands on Comstock. Comstock will continue to support and invest in Comstock fuels during this process until that funding is complete, nothing is slowing down, we’re continuing to speed up.

At Metals, as Croato mentioned, we expect billings to continue growing to over $2,500,000 for the full year 2025 from continued operations at the existing facility and our related services. We expect to hit breakeven by the end of twenty twenty six after the commissioning and operation of the first industry scale facility, which will invest $6,000,000 of CapEx into this year. We’ve seen robust demand in the market to start the year, which should translate into larger commitments from larger customers through the rest of 2025 in advance of the new facility coming online. And in mining, we intend to invest $1,000,000 to $2,000,000 in 2025 to begin the upgrade and expansion of our existing Dayton consolidated resource with the intermediate target of defining proven and probable reserves. We believe the ROI on this investment will be significant and ultimately lead to a production ready project.

So in addition to using this subsidiary and project level funding wherever it’s available, we’re going to continue to fund Comstock Inc. Through the sale of equity and debt securities in 2025. The progress and the announcements we’ve made over recent months have made a meaningful difference in the availability of capital and the improved terms being offered to us. We’re currently evaluating multiple options, both with bankers and directly sourced investors to ensure sufficient capital to meet all these plans this year and ensure our businesses each have a path to profitability. I know some people don’t share this point of view with us, but we see equity capital as the most efficient tool to build and grow shareholder value at this stage of a business’s life.

Additional equity capital buys growth. It makes the pie bigger for everyone. To me, it’s a fundamental concept. I’d much rather own 1% of a $700,000,000 plus company versus owning 2% or 3% of a $70,000,000 company. In reality, there’s no scenario where we get to $700,000,000 in fuels or $300,000,000 in metals or over $1,000,000,000 across this whole enterprise without injecting more growth capital this year.

When we complete this, and we’re going to do it as efficiently as possible, we believe the market will respond accordingly. So in summary, 2024 and the events of the last two months have laid the groundwork to stabilize and significantly improve our financial position in 2025, both at the corporate level and the subsidiary levels, allowing us to establish the necessary runway to build momentum through 2025 and beyond. We’re well positioned to raise the capital we need to hit plan this year and move towards significant revenue growth in 2026. And with that, I’m going to hand back to Corrado to talk about what’s ahead. Thanks, Billy.

Corrado De Gasparis, CEO and Executive Chair, Comstock Inc.: So, outstanding. So, I’m going to wrap up the last segment before we go to questions with the business outlook for 2025, maybe a little bit 2026. All of our 2025 outlook objectives, by the way, are also detailed in the 10 K that we just filed, which by the way, we also finalized the audit, which by the way, we got a clean opinion. You can all see that now with the on EDGAR. But let me start with metals.

So Comstock Metals has now been operating its first commercial demonstration facility for nearly a full year. We validated all critical parameters, intake revenues, tipping fees. Intake revenues or tipping fees, as many people call them, are slightly above expectation. That’s thrilling to me because I was worried two, three years ago about what that was all about, at over $500 a tonne. Offtake revenues, which we initially planned for nearly zero, are remarkably positive at $250 a tonne, primarily because we were able to produce 100% of the materials for reuse and resale.

And we continue to experience strong silver concentrations in these tailings, say silver rich tailings. The silver grades would make any Comstock binder proud. I mean, they’re big numbers. So costs are looking great too at about $200 a ton all in. When you think about a 75%, you could push 80% operating margin, it’s an extraordinarily good place to start.

But our success in this business starts with speed, a panel every seven seconds that enables scale, 3,300,000 panels per year from one line. That translates to 100,000 tons per year. And then the last variable, speed, scale, location. Our first facilities are wonderfully located in Silver Springs, Nevada, which is one truck day away from eight different states and importantly, in the immediate proximity of California and Arizona. Where with Nevada, most

Trevor Brucato, Investor Relations Moderator, RB Milestone Group: of

Corrado De Gasparis, CEO and Executive Chair, Comstock Inc.: the country’s end of life panels reside today. We’ll scale this up now in two phases and spend $6,000,000 this year with our plus our permits so that we have our first large scale facility up and running in 2026. It’s mind boggling that you could be breakeven or cash positive in a facility that’s only doing like 1,000 tons, 2,000 tons. The nature of this business model, very, very low variable costs, very, very fast throughput processing speed, very low CapEx. So 6,000,000 this year starts us at 50,000 tons and we can double that capacity quickly, efficiently.

As soon as we’re capturing enough of the market for that existing capacity, 50,000 tons and the numbers are ramping up fast, then we’ll expand it. And I can tell you that we’re off to a very, very good start. Last year, our first year of commissioning, we built over $500,000 in total revenue just right out of the chute. It’s all demonstration scale, a lot of trials, a lot of different types of panels. But the outlook for this year, as Billy is just saying, is five times larger for over 2,500,000 billed as our largest customers are now coming online and the business is rapidly growing.

So when we were starting this thing, when we pivoted, people thought we were crazy. When we were starting this thing up, are you going to be able to get customers? Are you going to lock up enough customers? Are you going to be able to do this? Are you going to be able to do that?

The team has done it. So during 2025, precisely our objectives are as follows. We’re going to maximize three shifts. Even though it’s a demonstration scale, we’re going to run it full. I’ll give you some insight.

Our customers want those panels destroyed as fast as possible so they can get their certificates of destruction. We’re doing them an environmental service. And revenue from the demonstration facility will keep flowing. We’re also going to secure that project level funding, right? We’re tearing this is a Comstock playbook.

We’re tearing the same page out that Fuels is using for a Series A type financing so that we can scale up the next two large Nevada based sites. We’ll complete our permitting on our first site in Silver Springs and land these equipments all by December. So fuels have much higher revenue, more and more high profile customers and the permitting in place once approved versus scaling it all up. Let me turn to fuels. Our 2025 objectives see us closing on the Series A by Q2.

It’s coming fast. This analogy of opening the gates for the horse race is absolutely what happened when we announced the first Tron Trus marathon. We will complete the site selection for the first project, the first refinery in Oklahoma in Q2 as well. It’s coming quickly. Once selected, we’ll start integrating a local HEXUS based fuel farm into that first refinery.

We’ve already done extensive planning with the HEXUS team on that. We’ll also secure sufficient project level financing for that refinery. This is not the same thing as the Series A. We fielded a lot of questions on this. The Series A, to be clear, relieves the parent of having to fund fuels.

It allows fuels to be funded on a standalone basis and depending on how much we close it out at for two to three years. That’s huge relief to the parent in terms of uses of cash. But and that’s necessary for fuels to stand alone for fuels to drive everything that it’s doing. But it’s not sufficient for building the facility. The project financing will allow us to build and commission that first facility.

We said repeatedly that’s over $200,000,000 for the first facility. Obviously, we got a great head start because the project funding certainly includes the $142,000,000 bond allocation that we received and we’re planning to place for that specific facility. And we have multiple outstanding bankers, old brackets and the like, working with us on this right now full time. We also plan, as we said a couple of times already, on integrating and expanding the new Madison facility with the Wassa facility to bring our pilot production capabilities up to two barrels a day. And lastly, we will most certainly be executing additional revenue generating commercial agreements from both pure licensees, like you’ve already seen internationally, 6% engineering fee, 6% royalty, 20% equity stakes.

But there’s more than that. We’re not just building our own facilities. We’re not just licensing our technologies and taking equity stakes in those things as well. But there’s a hybrid, which is resulting from more immediate integrations with existing companies. We’re now being lobbied by pulp and paper mills, by sugarcane mills.

And with our feedstock evolution, we’re even seeing a massive opportunity in corn ethanol. Think about it. If you’re a corn is much, much more expensive than xenografts. Corn has a significantly higher carbon impact score than xenografts. Xenografts and or other woody biomasses as waste result in higher revenue for the ethanol, even though it’s molecularly identical, simply because of the feedstock model that we’re enabling.

And if that was all it was, we could revolutionize corn ethanol. But that’s not all it is because corn doesn’t have the lignin content to be able to produce biolium and double and triple the yields. So if you’re a corn ethanol producer listening to the call, you probably already know David Winsenitz’s number. Just give him a call. Our solutions in feedstock can now quickly enhance those operations.

We see these as additional and very large segments of the market. Well, Corrado, why haven’t you guys talked about this before? Because you’d have to go chase feedstock to enable these things. HEXUS transforms the game of the feedstock model. So these are very large segments that we can now more readily integrate our solutions into and monetize.

All of this establishes a platform, an unprecedented platform for us to meet half, just half of The U. S. Mandate. If we can reach half of The U. S.

Mandate from the renewable fuel standards for advanced biofuels, we would be producing 200,000,000 barrels of fuel per year. That translates to over 8,000,000,000 gallons by 02/1935. ’8 billion gallons is half of a 16,000,000,000 gallon mandate. The U. S.

Market doesn’t burn 16,000,000,000 gallons a year. It burns two forty billion gallons a year. So these mandates are a fraction of a fraction of the market. And if we just take half of that fraction of a fraction, the game is over. And remember, all of those numbers are just The United States.

So we got a lot done in 2024. It was hard, right? But in 2025, we’re going to expect that we’re going to get much, much more done, increase our lead in the fuels business, increase our lead in the metals markets as our systems rapidly expand, both nationally and internationally. For Series A, for fuels, it will be the next most tangible evidence that both unlocks tremendous value, as Billy said, demonstrates and unlocks tremendous value and also positions for the spin out of a comp stock fuels that creates two very valuable, very high growth public companies. The valuation cap already realized is well over a double of what SBCC agreed to last summer.

So yes, SBCC missed a huge opportunity there. And the August SBCC deal is dead. Please stop asking me about it. Why would we place money into fuels at a $300,000,000 pre money valuation when we’re talking about a $700,000,000 pre money valuation, which I’m telling you is now the floor? I mean, we would never do fuels at a $300,000,000 valuation.

That’s behind us. To be clear, we love the people at SBCC. That team has worked their butt off for us and they have real capital behind them and they still remain very, very interested in being a capital partner with Comstock. We are clear on the value that’s been positioned here, okay? And we’re going to do everything in our power because our job is not to be clear on what the value is, not to fantasize about what the value is, but deliver the value where it’s recognized by others.

It’s already being recognized by others. They’re putting their money where their mouth is. They’re putting it on paper. They’re putting it in the bank. But our view here is that we’re talking about tens of billions of dollars of value, if not much higher.

There’s no question that opportunity is there. We’re also clear that having two game changing business opportunities addressing two massive global markets without the right capital and without the right funding results in this endless sell pressure on the stock. We don’t, we know, we know, we know. But we’re now positioned with the recently increased share capacity, thank you again from my heart, and with the Series A in fuels so that we don’t need to do any more of those convertible type bonds. Yes, you heard me say it.

But that, to be clear again, is not conflicting with what Billy said. I’m not saying we don’t need capital or that we won’t raise capital. What I’m saying is the capital is coming from much more key sources, like in the Series A, structured positively with investors who agree to be part of the value creation and that we have identified and that we are engaged with and who want to participate over the next five years, ten years to achieve the goal. So once we spin off fuels, if you’re a holder, you’ll have shares in both companies. We’re now, when I wrote the shareholder letter in January, we were strongly contemplating it.

We were biased to it. We didn’t know all of the implications to it. We know now and we’re committed to doing that and it will happen methodically after the Series A. When? I don’t know yet.

How? I don’t know exactly how yet. But I know that if you’re a holder of load, you will be holder of Comstock, you will be holder of BIOLIUM. What ratio? I don’t know.

What mechanism? I don’t know. I know what the possibilities are, but there’s a lot more work that we need to do. And quite frankly, we’re not going to do it until we close the Series I. A.

So we’ve achieved minimum sufficiency across an entire global supply chain. That sounds soft or small, but that is huge. It is a big, big thing that we have the chain from beginning to end globally. So now we just grow it. Now we just grow it.

Trevor, I think probably there’s the best place to stop. Now let’s just go to questions. I’m sure there’s a lot of questions. We took extra time, but it was the whole year in review and we did a lot.

Trevor Brucato, Investor Relations Moderator, RB Milestone Group: You certainly did and congrats to you and the team. Fuels is essentially the, as one might say, the oil well that never stops producing and the urban mining operation, your metals business essentially being the silver mine that never stops producing. So kudos on what you guys have built and continue to build. Let’s move into questions here. I know we’ve taken up a lot of time here and we want to keep this tight for you.

If you do have any questions, you can submit them in the Q and A module. So we’ll start off with there’s obviously a lot of questions here on fuels, lot of advancements over the last six months. Fuel seems to have a rapid growth plan on building multiple facilities, whether it’s owned or licensed in the near term and through to 02/1935 that had been discussed in the past. How will this be possible from a human capacity perspective and capital perspective?

Corrado De Gasparis, CEO and Executive Chair, Comstock Inc.: Great question. So The U. S. Mandate alone, we like instead of talking about number of facilities, we really prefer to talk about tonnages and barrels, okay? So ultimately, to get to half of The U.

S. Mandate, you’re talking about 50,000,000 tons of feedstock material. We have clear calculus on four times that amount of feedstock, okay? So we have the feedstock to do it. That’s the most relevant question.

That capacity, that capability, if you will, did not exist until our technology unblocked it, okay? Number two, right, we’re doing project level financing and you’re seeing capital pool to it, including high incentives from each state. Each state in each country that we’re working with realizes that this is not a type of thing, the Governor’s Office of Economic Development, let’s reel in a new company, they look kind of cool. No. This changes the foundational ecosystem of the state.

They become leaders in oil and gas and at the same time, leaders in agriculture. Now that same thing applies to countries. Pakistan sees an ability to become energy independent. In The U. S, we see the ability to become energy dominant, literally unleashing these, okay?

How do we do it? Capital pools at the subsidiary level. Frankly, after the first one, now you have 100% proof you’re fully derisked. The risk on investors, right, are filthy rich. And then every other capital source wants to come and play because it’s been derisked.

Okay, number one. Number two, the corn ethanol industry, after building serial number one in The United States built 200 facilities in a seven to eight year period. Okay. How did they do that? The answer is not by themselves.

So the idea of partners, the idea of entity level equity partners, the idea of strategic partners and the idea of international licensees unleashes the capital and unleashes the human I mean, the financial capital and then will unleash the human capital as well. So yes, it’s an endeavor. It’s an endeavor. And then as we’re converting corn to wood or we’re bolting onto pulp and paper, you already have established supply chains there, you already have established permitting regimes there and you already have established workforces there. So an incremental expansion is surely easier, right?

But they all produce more gallons. They all produce more barrels, right? So we have a clear view on this. And it’ll evolve. It’s already evolved from where do we pocket a facility where there’s waste wood from a lumber mill or a pulp and paper mill to now how do we aggregate and optimize like some giga power in converting farmlands or even more excitingly with HEXUS using marginal unproductive lands to do something that is equivalent to current farmlands.

So it’s all of the above, Trevor. Hopefully, that helps.

Trevor Brucato, Investor Relations Moderator, RB Milestone Group: It does. Thank you. And there seems to be some needed clarity here. Is the 20%, you can also add in the 66% regarding the economics associated with licensing the technology, the fuels technology. In order to obtain that, is there any sort of contingency as it relates to capital that Comstock needs to provide for each of these projects?

Corrado De Gasparis, CEO and Executive Chair, Comstock Inc.: If we if we’ve got five of those going on over the next three years, you’re looking at $200,000,000 to $300,000,000 of revenues just from engineering services for fuel. So even though we know our first facility is a few years off from actually producing fuel except for Madison, right, then we have engineering fees in the meantime. But then we get royalties. But then we get that 20% equity stake, not for 20% of the capital. They put 100% of the capital in.

We’re getting that 20% equity stake as the contribution of technology right from day one. So I know it sounds robust, you and I, because it is robust. You know why? Because the financials are robust And our licensees are going to get extremely wealthy deploying this model and we just want to share in that well.

Trevor Brucato, Investor Relations Moderator, RB Milestone Group: Thank you, Corrado. A lot of questions you guys have already addressed as it relates to the timing and specifics associated with the Series A, with the spin out. So I don’t think we need to touch on that. So everyone that is curious about that, if you don’t mind going back to recording

Corrado De Gasparis, CEO and Executive Chair, Comstock Inc.: with us. Trevor, I wouldn’t mind just summarizing that. The Series A is tens of millions of dollars going right into fuels. The project level, SPV level financing for Oklahoma, serial number one, dollars two hundred million plus going below fuels, right? Another subsidiary underneath, not diluting fuels, right, underneath.

Some equity will come in there too. So it could be very reasonable that we have 80% of that facility, but we’re working through some tax equities that actually allow us to have a win win for people who would benefit from those kinds of investments. And then we became high, high ownership forevermore. And then third is the split, which is literally spinning off a company that now has three legs to stand on, not two, right, and becomes a separate standalone focus. We’re doing that for many reasons, right?

But one of them is that the people that are investing directly into fuels, like investing in fuel energy and wouldn’t typically or by policy couldn’t invest in load. So we get the best of both worlds is how we feel about it.

Billy McCarthy, Chief Operating Officer, Comstock Inc.: Thanks, Robert.

Trevor Brucato, Investor Relations Moderator, RB Milestone Group: Looking at the urban mining business, the metal side, the plan right now is primarily throughout The U. S. Are there any plans, growth opportunities abroad, for example, Australia?

Corrado De Gasparis, CEO and Executive Chair, Comstock Inc.: Great question. So we’ve been laser focused on the Southwest Region of The United States, right? And the rest of the country has pulled us out, right? We’ve got Florida, we’ve got Pennsylvania, we’ve got New Jersey. We’ve got at least seven or eight or nine states that we’ve received panels from, which validates a lot to us, okay?

In one case, it’s because there really isn’t an alternative at all, even though the volumes may be marginal or small. In another case, it’s just the big ones who don’t see anybody else that can handle the scale that they need. But we’re being approached from multiple continents, let me leave it that way, right, where they would love to see international joint ventures. They’ve assessed and believe that our technology is the fastest, is the most efficient and critically is the best, easiest to scale. So we’ll see how those proceed.

That’s early stage. Fortunato is in the market every single day, so he’s just bumping into everything.

Trevor Brucato, Investor Relations Moderator, RB Milestone Group: Coming up on time here, any clarity on the $50,000,000 shelf in the 10 ks?

Corrado De Gasparis, CEO and Executive Chair, Comstock Inc.: So we always have a registered shelf on record. If you go back fifteen years, you’ll see that we have a registered shelf always on hand. Now if you’re a public company, typically the reason you’re a public company is that you want efficient access to the capital markets. Doesn’t mean you need it, but you have it and you want it. If you really want it practically, then you should always have a registration statement on record, on shelf, if you will.

They typically expire every three years and we just replace them like a month before they expire. If we use them all or if we don’t use them, we always have one in place. So that’s a constant.

Trevor Brucato, Investor Relations Moderator, RB Milestone Group: Appreciate it. So let’s wrap it up there. I know there’s a lot of questions. Anything that we have not gotten to, we’ll do our best to get back to you by email or include in future events and in future press releases. So I appreciate your time, but I’ll put the ball back in your court here, Corrado, for any final comments.

Corrado De Gasparis, CEO and Executive Chair, Comstock Inc.: Yes, absolutely. So look, just in summary, we’re fully subordinating and supporting the businesses for obviously first getting the Series A project funding done and ultimately spinning off fuels. So then we end up with these two public companies for all of our shareholders. Both companies on a standalone basis have huge addressable markets as we just spoke about metals internationally and will rapidly grow. So our next quarter call will be the April, could be potentially early May, and the AGM is scheduled now for May 22.

We have a tremendous amount of work to do between now and then. You’ll be getting updates without question between now and then. And as Trevor said, we’ll look to circle back and answer any questions that you have sent in that we were not able to answer on this time, but we strongly, strongly appreciate all of our investors. Everything that we’re doing is to unlock this value. We’re freaking close and it’s all coming.

I can tell you the tone here is energized and excited. We’re working our butts off and we’re growing. So it’s all coming. I wouldn’t trade where we are now for anything. So thank you, everyone, and please stay tuned.

Trevor Brucato, Investor Relations Moderator, RB Milestone Group: Record numbers of attendance, I think that speaks to everything that you guys have been doing and the value that continues to be unlocked. So thanks, Corrado, Billy and the Comstock team and thanks to everyone for joining today. Please keep an eye out for the recording. We will be sending that out by email and it’s also going to be uploaded at Comstock Inc or Comstock.inc. If you have any questions that you have not submitted or that have not been addressed, ircomstockinc.com.

Again, that’s ircomstockinc.com. That concludes today’s event. Thanks everyone for your time.

Corrado De Gasparis, CEO and Executive Chair, Comstock Inc.: Outstanding. Thank you all. Thank you.

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