Comstock Inc (LODE) 2021 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Comstock 2021 Year-end Financial Results and Business Update Webcast.

Now here is Comstock's Executive Chairman and CEO, Mr. Corrado De Gasperis.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our quarterly update.

As you may have already seen, the annual report filed last night, our new website launched last week, and the shareholder letter published earlier this month reflect completely new content for our renewable energy businesses and our mission of enabling systemic decarbonization. In 2017, we began a restructuring of the company and monetizing certain non-productive assets, frankly, assets with value but that just weren't doing or going to do the job for our shareholders. I'll provide a good substantive update on our recent Tonogold transaction and other non-strategic assets that we're monetizing on the call today.

In 2020, with the restructuring complete and with the senior secured debt eliminated, we began to meaningfully shift our focus on to new investments in renewable technologies where we would have meaningfully differentiated businesses that would enable rapid growth, robust cash flows, all while persistently monetizing and realizing the value of our other non-strategic assets for our shareholders. 2021 proved to be a pivotal year in this regard, where 3 key acquisitions completely transformed us into a renewable energy company and repositioned us for rapid growth starting now here in 2022.

I'll provide an overview of these transactions, our resulting lines of businesses, our organization and our outlook for this growth, including the information in our press release from this morning and from our annual report filed on Form 10-K last night. If you don't have a copy of today's press release, you'll find a copy on our new website, www.comstock.inc at either the bottom of the new homepage or the top of the Investor page in the Newsroom section. A Form 10-K is also available on the website on the Investor page under SEC Filings and, of course, also via EDGAR on www.sec.gov.

Please let me remind you that we'll make forward-looking statements on this call, including the outlook for Comstock Fuels and LiNiCo and our progress on the monetization of the nonstrategic assets. Please understand that any statements related to matters that are not historical facts may constitute forward-looking statements. Our statements are based on current expectations and are subject to the same risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. These risks and uncertainties are detailed in the previous reports filed by the company with the SEC and in this morning's press release, and all forward-looking statements made during this call are subject to the same and other risks that we cannot identify.

Once we complete the prepared remarks, Zach, who is with me here, will accept and direct all questions zooming in, and I will look forward to answering them.

Let me briefly discuss our financial position. Our assets last year nearly tripled to $127 million from just $43 million in the prior year, and the same is true with our net equity, growing over $92 million, up from just over $30 million in 2020. We did all this while eliminating all of our secured debt, adding a state-of-the-art 137,000 square-foot battery metal recycling facility here in Nevada, a large-scale prototype battery crushing and separating system and cellulose extracting system, all of those assets in Wisconsin, while building lithium extraction and Bioleum extraction prototypes in our innovation and research development facility. This book value is especially meaningful when we consider that our mineral assets and our investments in Sierra Springs are recorded at cost, at a tiny fraction on our books as compared to their monetizable value.

We also have an incredible portfolio of patents and intellectual property representing over $23 million in book value, and really effectively the driver of billions of dollars in future value. We've also recorded revenue from engineering services for the first time in 2021 representing our first plans towards much more meaningful revenues expected here in 2022 and 2023, associated with our cellulosic technology and equipment sales thereto.

We currently, as of today, have 67.7 million shares outstanding, reflecting our decision to terminate the LP Bio transaction and get the full 3.5 million shares in Comstock [fast] returned to the company. While [matters run we hit] MCU, the MCU Philippines' team is in place there and operating. The system is fully permitted and operational, and we spent the last 3 months extensively testing the river. I'm sorry that we haven't had better news sooner. And although we are finding lithium gold amalgam on literally every sample [hole] tested, the grades have been well below our expectations.

We will complete the testing over the next few weeks -- just the next couple of weeks and make a decision on how best to deploy the system based on the contamination of gold content that we now see. These results are just not sufficient for us to operate it profitably, so the hope is that we would discover much higher levels of mercury and gold amalgam and so far that has not been the case. We have proved that if there was more gold, that operation would be profitable. But to date, we just not have found -- we just have not found enough.

Frankly, our biggest achievement in 2021 was the acquisition and integration of an exceptional senior management team and this portfolio of decarbonizing technologies that we are now commercializing. We are integrating into one organization, one system, Comstock Inc., with one goal, and that's to accelerate these high-growth decarbonizing technologies while we're unlocking the value of the other assets by monetizing them. The acquisition of Plain Sight Innovations, now Comstock Innovations, and Renewable Process Solutions, now Comstock Engineering, represent our newly-established innovation and commercial development capabilities where we can now commercialize our own IP, physically demonstrate our technology and rapidly prototype new products for our customers. We can also engineer and manufacture these [solutions] for ourselves and our customers. We have already designed and built breakthrough crushing and separating solutions for advanced pure, highly-mineralized black mass from lithium-ion batteries, and we are currently advancing our extraction technology for lithium, cellulosic sugar and Bioleum and more.

Our core competency is literally natural resource extraction. When we realized last year that our extraction technology was producing a carbon-neutral equivalent to petroleum, we immediately filed a trademark for that name, Bioleum, which we are now saying publicly today for the first time. All of our entire patent portfolio now resides in Comstock's IP holdings. Kevin Kreisler, our President, and Billy McCarthy, our Chief Operating Officer have and continue to lead the organization daily to this end.

We've also established Comstock Fuels, which I just mentioned a bit earlier, our 100% owned cellulosic fuels business representing 1 of our 2 renewable energy businesses. The acquisition of LiNiCo, initially as a minority in early 2021 and now owning over 90%, is led by our newly-appointed President, Leo Riera, and represents our other renewable energy business. Both of these businesses renew carbon-neutral materials [with] fuel transportation.

The leadership team, including Kevin, including Billy, including Leo, and David Winsness, our Chief Technology Officer; and Rahul Bobbili, our Chief Engineer; will be on hand at this year's annual meeting on May 26 in Reno. Please do register and attend where you can speak, meet and discuss our capabilities with the entire senior team firsthand.

Let me dive a little bit deeper into renewable fuels. We believe that renewable fuels provide the most critical, real-world mechanism for decarbonization. However, today, most current forms of these renewable fuels draw from the same pool of conventional feedstocks like corn oil, like vegetable oil, without any truly meaningful carbon benefits. That entire corn and vegetable universe only represents a tiny fraction of the global transportation burn, so they can barely make a dent. Any serious plan to meaningfully decarbonize using renewable fuels must involve abundant and available feedstocks that no one else is using today.

Comstock Fuels owns a portfolio of technologies that resolve these feedstock limitations by efficiently converting waste, that is, widely available and rapidly replenishable waste in the form of woody biomass, into these advanced cellulosic fuels. We can do this today under existing regulations, incredibly profitable, and the federal government is now making sweeping changes to enable even more, which we recently have publicly commented on. When we say waste, we mean sawdust, mill residuals, flash that no one is using for fuels and that work perfectly in our process. We can now unlock vast quantities of these historically unused and underutilized feedstock with enough renewable carbon to permanently offset billions of tons of fossil fuel emissions. This is real-world decarbonization and is incredibly responsible. It's incredibly profitable.

We understand that there's upwards to 1 billion tons per year of this waste biomass currently generated in the U.S. alone. That's enough to produce 1.7 billion barrels, again per year, of carbon-neutral fuels with our technologies, far more than 1/3 of the U.S. transportation demand.

This doesn't address the potential of underutilized forest lands. I'm just talking about the waste, the residuals, the sawdust, the flash. These underutilized forest lands could be restored and used to sustainably grow, harvest and replant billions of tracts of fast-growing energy crops for conversion into billions more barrels of renewable fuels, again, with our technologies. The combined output could exceed 50% of America's current output on fossil crude and it's 100% renewable. Shockingly, Canada has even more.

The impact here is massive. It's truly the equivalent of an oil well that could never run dry, and our technologies are effectively the drill that unlocks the natural resource. So our plan will be to rapidly build, deploy, own and then operate a fleet of advanced carbon-neutral extraction and refining facilities. Our goal is to safely generate $16-plus billion in revenue on an annual basis by 2030. We plan to design, build, retrofit an existing facility first and commence producing and selling cellulosic ethanol and diesel, and we're already assessing the sites for the next 10 facilities. Targeted the first one, targeting the second one, and we're assessing the sites for the next 10. That's how we'll achieve rapid scale, by tapping into and leveraging the existing infrastructure.

We're talking about leveraging the existing infrastructure. We're not talking about building a new infrastructure. Our expanded team has extensive experience doing just that in this industry, having designed and built over 20 large-scale industrial renewable fuel facilities. Meeting that objective alone would offset more than 234 million barrels per year of fossil fuel, which is about 6% of the U.S. transportation burden, yet only requiring about 80% of this available yield as biomass residuals. What I'm saying is that we'll convert this untapped woody biomass into cellulosic drop-in fuels like diesel, like sustainable aviation fuel, like marine fuel, gasoline and cellulosic ethanol. These fuels work in the existing infrastructure. This diesel goes into existing trucks. This aviation fuel goes into existing planes. It works with existing depots, fueling stations, et cetera.

And just one of our biorefineries, just one, can produce over 100 million gallons of biofuel per year which would represent about 70 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol and 30 million gallons of renewable diesel. Again, per year from just 1 million metric tons of woody biomass. This is how we enable global decarbonization, by burning less [solid] fossil fuels, burning smarter with more renewable fuels and burning cleaner by recycling emissions into more feedstock.

I could stop there, but there's more. Because as we know, electrification is also playing a meaningful role in reducing our reliance on fossil fuels. Although frankly, the notion that it's the sole solution is factually and literally nonsense. But our second decarbonization initiative is our electrification products business, which results from our 90% ownership of LiNiCo. We are pleased to announce that we have onboarded our new LiNiCo President, as I just mentioned, Leo Riera. Leo has extensive background in building this type of renewable business. He's the founder of EnviroPower Renewable Inc. that developed waste-to-energy solutions both domestically and internationally. He has extensive domestic international M&A experience, has got some strong financial project and transactional management experience. We're not only excited to have Leo fully on board; he's here in Nevada as we speak at the LiNiCo facility.

[PDA] registrations, of course, are exploding, more than doubled in 2021, and meeting even the most conservative estimates for these increases in EV demand will likely result in about 5x more lithium carbonate than the entire mining industry produces today. The conventional recycling processes that we are seeing deployed suffer from extremely high if not total loss of lithium.

Our technology meets the realities of this demand and this demand shortfall by extracting lithium early and profitably. We will extract lithium immediately after crushing and separating in a manner that maximizes the lithium recovery for reuse in batteries. These market-leading yields and additional revenues allows us to be profitable at very low levels of production, very low production levels, by putting lithium first. We are also partnered with the developing technologies for cleanly processing and producing other metals like nickel, cobalt, manganese as well as technologies that can recycle our highly pure black mass and produce 99% pure precursor cathode active materials.

Collectively, these technologies give LiNiCo great scalability, including the ability to process up to 100,000 tons of spent batteries per year, with broad differentiating advantages up and down the supply chain and up and down our novel processes. This breadth gives our platform a much larger addressable market, and there's no spoke or hub. Just a well-designed, well-engineered and fully-integrated system with higher yields, faster throughput that operates at a fraction of the industry's current cost.

The first commercial prototype, 6-ton per day crushing and separating system, is being assembled and commissioned right now as we speak. Once our Nevada permits are secured this summer, it will be located at our state-of-the-art facility right here in Nevada, so we could expect production this year. This positions our recycling business to contribute billions of dollars to our enterprise value just from LiNiCo, just based on existing valuations of comparable companies and our perceived advantages in that industry against those companies.

Let me just conclude the prepared remarks with the monetization of our non-core assets. If it hasn't been obvious, we've been working hard to monetize our non-performing mineral and real estate assets. For us, performing means generating socially responsible revenue, robust throughput and impacting decarbonization.

We are pleased to announce that we just completed a transaction. The Tonogold pays us $1.75 million this week as a prerequisite for us exchanging the $6.65 million due this month for an option to repurchase the Lucerne Mine by the end of this year for just under $8 million. This does technically mean that we took back the ownership of the Lucerne Mine, at least temporarily, in lieu of cash payments and a higher value due later this year. For us, this is just one example of extraordinarily effective monetization of these assets.

Tono is also separately paying us annually for the leasing of all of our Northern mining plains that they're planning to drill and develop with their capital, where we retain royalties on all of those properties. They have committed to us in writing tens of millions of dollars to this end, and this is another example of monetization. Tono will still reimburse us an additional $2 million per year for the cost of maintaining the mining platform and certain mining property payments. This is yet another example for monetization. They have now completed their draft S-K 1300 that we have reviewed, and we expect that Tono will announce shortly a very meaningful restructuring and realignment, that resets their financial position and funds their development plans.

We will also publish our own S-K 1300 compliant technical report on the southern part of the district with the Dayton and Spring Valley and [Oest] territories, within reasonable proximity of Tono publishing theirs. Tono is on the northern part of the district, we are on the southern part of the district. Both these reports will have mineral resource estimates and the combined reports represent substantially all the Comstock Mineral District and positions us to maximize another round of monetization. Of course, as of today, we own all the assets, including Lucerne. With gold hovering around $1,900 an ounce, the publication of these 2 reports are timely for meeting our monetization objectives.

In closing, let me say we've already made a remarkable process on our operating businesses. We are currently building commercial pilot-scale cellulosic fuels and LIB facilities and we are preparing to deploy the LIB recycling facilities in Nevada later this year, as I just mentioned. The monetization of our non-strategic assets will support funding of our new operating businesses while limiting substantially all of our focus, substantially all of our focus to cellulosic fuels, lithium battery recycling and the intelligent monetization of these other assets to unlock the highest of value for our shareholders.

Excited to take all your questions. Zach, please let's stop here and let's go right into the Q&A.

Thanks, Corrado.

We've had quite a few questions submitted during your presentation, and I know you have addressed all of the different lines of business.

So the first one is with respect to GenMat and to the extent possible. Can you provide some further details about GenMat? And also, there was an NDA discussed a few months ago. When does that end? They want to know if there's a timetable or if it's based on the completion of some sort of milestone.

Thank you, Zach.

So yes, I appreciate the question very well. So I think as we evolve here and as we are making it clear where our priorities are, especially our mission of enablizing systemic decarbonization, it's going to become clearer and clearer to everyone how GenMat is aligned with our goals. Having said that, right? Having said that, and you know that GenMat's core business objective is to generate new materials, new materials. Where, for us, we're prioritizing carbon capture, decarbonization of the energy infrastructure and as well as batteries and battery science. So GenMat's working on those objectives.

As a policy, as a rule, we won't talk about the research and development activities until the achievements are made and are communicated to everyone at the same time. So I'd like to leave it by saying that the schedule of GenMat work stands in the next 18 to 24 months. That's the time frame where they're going to be dedicated to the generative material science work that they're doing. And as those results come out, not only will they be meaningful, but you'll see clearly how they're aligned with everything else that Comstock Inc. is now focusing on as a priority.

Thank you, Corrado.

We have had a few questions about MCU. Would you please detail the MCU revenues and projections?

So I mentioned that we were disappointed by the results in the river in the Philippines. Let me put context in it. When we went into the Philippine project, 27-kilometer river, we were expecting to be taking large volumes of mercury amalgam out of that river with average grades representing at least a gram per ton. Some of you have heard me say that a gram per ton, we could be generating $1 million a month, okay? We're sampling now with results at 0.2 of a gram, even less, so it's not sufficient for the system to be profitable. If those results were higher; in other words, if the grades were higher, then we would have the ability to generate the cash that we were looking forward to.

So what we're going to do is we're going to complete the testing because we want to be thorough. We're working incredibly well with the local environmental regulators, could not be going better. Incredibly well with our local joint venture partner. None of that dismisses the depth of disappointment, right, that we're having with the results not being there. So after that work is done, we will assess the current situation and we will decide what the best next steps are in terms of deploying these assets.

I also want to emphasize, we own 25% of MCU. We are not deployed with our human resources. We are not deployed with our cash working this business. So we're focused with substantially all of our resources, substantially all of our dedication, to the renewable energy businesses now. So as disappointing for me as I think it is for everyone, it's not finished, but we will have meaningfully specific results in terms of the Philippines shortly and as we go forward.

Corrado, we have an overall question. When will our investments lead to visible revenue?

Thank you, Zach.

So I've alluded to it in the shareholder letter. I've alluded to it in the press release this morning that we will be communicating in the nearer term. I'm not going to put dates on it. We're going to deliver when it's ready to be delivered. But in the near term, coming soon, a meaningful engagement that will result in meaningful revenues. 2022 and 2023 relating to our cellulosic fuels, technology and [equipment]. So that's something we're very excited about. It validates in a number of ways what we're doing and what others can do with our technology. It in no way limits what we are going to do, and what I just described we are doing, with that same technology. In other words, there are other applications of this technology using woody biomass that go into other markets that we are thrilled to help enable others to do internationally.

Okay, Corrado.

Now we have a question about mining. What is the status of the [getting] consolidated and free value? Are we close to publishing a report on the property?

So the geological work is finally complete. The digitization and integration of that work into the model is near complete. The consultative audit work that [deredovere] has to do is deeply in progress. Once the final models are completed and audited, we will look towards publishing that report, hopefully in the next couple of months. I think it will be pretty well-synchronized coincidentally, not by design, with Tonogold publishing their SK 1300 report, as we said. And I'm very satisfied to say there'll be 2 technical reports with mineral resources, measured, indicated and inferred mineral resources promulgated and communicated in both of those reports in the very near future.

And when it comes to our mining assets, let me be clear, right, we're allocating our capacity. We're allocating our capital cellulosic fuels. We're allocating our capacity. We're dedicating our resources to lithium ion battery recycling, putting lithium first. And we are partnering with others to deploy capital and to monetize these assets and to unlock the value for our shareholders. But you won't be seeing Kevin, Billy, David, Rahul, Leo, or any of our management team, right, building and commercializing these businesses. You will be seeing [Larry Mine] supporting the ability for others to [be it] effectively.

A lot of [lead] received several questions about an update on LINICO. I know you provided one during your presentation. A lot of listeners are asking about when will we commence the battery recycling, and when can we expect revenue?

So thank you for the question, Zach. So I mentioned on the call that we expect it to be up and running by the end of the year.

Let me just give you a little bit of color. We've engineered and designed a system that we think is novel in a number of regards, okay? First, we have a very diverse ability, a good ability to accept diverse feedstocks from the largest of EV batteries to the smallest of power tool batteries. We literally can feed the system with the diverse array of feedstock. This is important because EV batteries, which is the tsunami that people see coming and we see coming, right, still have some time before the wave crashes, right, and crushes the market with all these EV batteries coming off market.

But in terms of electronic devices, the wave has already crested, like the ocean is already out there. And so the ability to take diverse feedstocks is a differentiator that we're very proud of. The ability to take diverse feedstocks and even charge batteries and [thrusted] and safely is something that we're very proud of. The ability to extract lithium.

And I mentioned on the call and it's worth re-emphasizing, our core competency is extraction. Extraction of minerals from natural resources, from waste resources is our core competency. When I say core competency, I mean we have decades of experience doing this with other materials in other applications. We have decades of experience doing this directly with cellulose and cellulosic sugars and ethanol. And this same technology that we have patents and intellectual property around is being used to extract lithium first from the black masses, so this is a synergy that is hard to quantify the value of. It's remarkable.

And so all of that is being commissioned, put into process and, from an extraction perspective, being developed, right, in our R&D facility. Once we have the permits, we're going to move that prototype, which is not small. 6 tons per day is not small. It's not 100 tons per day, like the main unit, but it's not small. And we'll be able to receive crush the purest of black masses and sell those materials. That's coming very soon. Then we'll be able to extract lithium thereafter, and that's coming. And we'll be profitable at very low levels of volumes.

These are the differentiators that we see when we compare ourselves to others, we don't see anybody extracting lithium. I mean factually, we see that they're not extracting lithium. We see that they're selling black mass and getting 0 for the lithium, yet they're highly valued, okay? So we feel we're right behind them. And once we prove it, once we demonstrate it, then the value will be clear to everybody else as well.

Thank you, Corrado.

The next question is, please provide us with an update on our non-mining assets, such as our land and real estate in Silver Springs?

Sure. So there are really 2 buckets, right? The blend Silver Springs and the Daney Ranch. For the Daney Ranch, we have full expectation to be closing on the sale of Daney Ranch, $2.5 million, before the end of the summer. That's an active transaction that seems near certain to close. We have a great counterparty who's leased the property. It's a 2-year lease with the option to buy. They've indicated they're ready to exercise the option. They're going through the process. It seems to be going extremely well.

In terms of the Silver Springs assets, like there's been delays in that context, we understand that. The fund that has contracted to and put a deposit on those assets, the agreement is to close them by the end of June. That fund is actively raising money. It's successfully raising money. It's raising money at much, much higher values than when it started 2 years ago. It's just been a little slower than we've anticipated. We expect that to close.

All in all, you're talking about $15 million of non-dilutive proceeds coming into the company within the next 5, 6 months.

Corrado, people would like to hear more about Bioleum and how it is produced. And also our expected revenue generation from it.

So once this gets traction -- once people actually understand what we now understand, it's going to be a remarkable realization. The ability to take from waste, effectively the carbon-neutral equivalent of petroleum, and turn it into diesel fuel that can drop into existing vehicles. There is sustainable aviation fuel that can drop into existing planes. Marine fuels that can drop into ocean freight-bearing liners from waste. And any other derivative that comes out of petroleum, the carbon-neutral replacement, things are going to get exciting.

How is that realization going to occur? First, by us telling people what we have. Secondly, by us demonstrating it to the world. And so we are building -- we are designing and building a prototype, right, to do just that, in exactly the same fashion than we did with the lithium-ion battery crushing and separating system. When that comes online, we'll be able to demonstrate not only our ability to produce pulp, cellulosic sugar and ethanol, which we can do today in our facility. We can do today in our facility, already done. From this same material, liquefy and extract carbon-neutral equivalent to petroleum, which we're calling Bioleum, there's going to be an incredible amount of excitement outside the company. I can tell you guys right now, there's an incredible amount of excitement inside the company.

This is one of the single largest discoveries and variables in our decision to move so hard and so singularly-focused to renewable energy. We acquired Plain Sight Innovations, now Comstock Innovations, because we knew they can take woody biomass and convert it into cellulosic ethanol.

Cellulosic ethanol, which is superior in every single way to corn ethanol. It's identical molecularly, but when you're taking waste material at a fraction of the cost of the feedstock, and you're getting revenues at dramatically increased percentages because of the specific carbon impact that cellulosic fuel has as compared to corn ethanol, cellulosic ethanol as compared to corn ethanol. If they're getting wins, if they're getting carbon credits of $0.40, $0.50 a gallon, we're getting them at $2 plus a gallon. That's what we're talking about. A difference in revenue that is dramatic and a fraction of feedstock that's dramatic. We can do that. That's already known. That's why we bought Comstock Innovations, formerly known as Plain Sight Innovations. That's also why we bought Renewable Process Solutions because they built 20 similar facilities over the last 15 years.

But the breakthrough to be able to extract not just the byproduct. When we were diligencing this stuff, we were talking about, what are some byproducts? What is lignum, what do you do with it you burn it in a boiler. Is that good? Yes, it's good. Saves you money, has carbon impact, not that exciting. To be able to create and derive the molecular equivalent, right, of petroleum, and you even find variations of that. I can't exaggerate the drama, I can't exaggerate the meaning of it.

And then you say, well, gosh, how are you going to do that? Well, we already know how to do it. Take an existing 100 million-gallon ethanol facility, convert the feedstock equation. Instead of making 100 million gallons of corn ethanol, make 100 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol or 70 or 80. But then throw in another 30 million of diesel. Same facility, same feedstock.

The derisking nature of this breakthrough when you're talking about taking existing platforms with existing profitable throughput [shoots] and then adding a whole another stream to it, we were stunned, and so I couldn't be more excited. But I hope that at least touches on what we see coming with Bioleum.

I want to reiterate, Annual Meeting is May 26. Kevin is going to be there. Billy is going to be there. David is going to be there. Rahul is going to be there. You want to talk about this, that's who you want to be talking directly to. I very strongly encourage you guys to register and be in Reno on that Thursday.

Corrado. And just a reminder to everyone, you can register for the annual meeting on our new website.

And Corrado, that takes us to our next question and statement. Thank you for all of your hard work. The new logo and website look really good. When will the new hats be available?

So they are already in progress. I'll tell you guys, I know maybe you're being funny, but they'll be available for the annual meeting, that's for sure. So no, there was nice thought put into the logo, the circularity especially, right?

We -- I think everyone can see, regardless of how you feel about climate change, that there is a global shift in sentiment, okay? That's nice. Global shifts in sentiment are nice, okay. People are paying attention, capital is seeking solutions. But what's really nice is when you have a technology that's profitable, when you have a technology that's impactful. And you can synchronize the rate at which you decarbonize and make money with no conflict. That's what we've been working on for 7 or 8 months here, and we have the solution.

Now when I say we have the solution, I don't want to come across the wrong way. There's going to be developments that advance the yields on diesel. There's going to be developments on breakthrough in advancing yields on aviation fuel. We're going to be working our butts off, right, for the next 24 months, just making it better, okay, more and better. So it's like we're not at the finish line, like we're at the starting line and the line starts with a profitable solution.

So we can start building these solutions now. We can start generating throughput with these facilities. We're moving forward now. We've cleared the gate on minimum sufficiency. They're highly profitable, okay? But we're going to continue to develop and expand. How many things can you do with oil, right? The same exact thing. That's what we're talking about.

Corrado, you stated in your recent letter to shareholders and also in the 10-K that there are announcements coming about near-term revenue. Can you please share more information on this?

Really, it's the similar question that I answered previously, right? We have a great situation with an international company, with a huge woody biomass footprint that's going to use our exact technology, right. Not to produce the loss of sugar and [optimal] fuels, but to produce an intermediary that's extremely profitable. Validates our test, brings in revenue this year, brings in revenue next year. Which is really, frankly, a nice bridge to getting our first facility online. People should not expect the first facility online to be online until 2025, okay? But you can expect frequent updates to our achievements, our processes, our prototypes. You can expect demonstrations of our ability to deliver these solutions, and I mean physically demonstrate what we're saying we can do at prototype scales that prove the viability.

That's what we're hustling to do, right? We're hustling to show soon, quickly, as fast as we can, okay, that we can do it, and we're doing it. We're excited about it. It's going to take a little bit of time, but we're going to do it. And when we can do it, we're going to show everybody. At the same time, we're securing the first site. At the same time, we're looking at the next 9 sites. At the same time, we're building the plant, okay?

The question that people will ask, and I'll just preempt it, is how do you finance this thing? Well, when you see the robustness of the cash flows, you finance it at the project level, and we're already directly engaged. We've already got incredibly strong feedback on that point, so we will look to regionalize these operations and it all ties to the feedstock. We know where the feedstock is, that's where the facilities are going to be. It's not a secret, and that's where we'll go, Zach.

Excellent. So yes, that was good for the near term as well as financing at the project level.

People would like to know how much capital we would need to hit the $16 billion mark in 2030? And if you could provide a little more clarity on how we get to that amount?

Yes. I just alluded to it.

Let me just say this, 30 facilities across few hundreds of millions of capital for it, okay? They're not small facilities. They produce 100 million gallons of fuel per annum, okay? And what I just said and I want to reiterate, is that we're getting interest to finance both equity and project needs and at the project level. So we're going to do everything in our power, right, and we're getting great reception. So I'm not even feeling like this is a lot of wood to chop here, right, to ensure that we minimize the solution of the LODE shareholder and we maximize the value.

I'd like to make a point, all the technology resides at Lode. Our goal is to accelerate the commercialization of these technologies at the Lode level. Comstock Inc. holds the technology. Comstock Inc. holds all the growth prospects. Comstock Inc. holds the growth in that value.

The subsidiaries, think of them as just operating cash machines. Oh, yes, by the way, Comstock owns a substantial majority of those 2. Willing to finance at that local level means that the minority will come in as equity and debt financing and project financing, and that's a cash machine. That's the cash machine that returns cash to comps loans. That's the cash machine that returns cash to the financing capital at the subsidiary level. Comstock gets the cash. Comstock gets the growth that comes with existing technologies and with the new technology that we'll be rolling out from here. That's the model.

With the new lines of businesses, do you expect to be able to receive any grants from the government for these new businesses?

Yes is the answer. We've dedicated senior resources, and quite frankly, Billy, Kevin, David, have spent a lot of time with our other senior resources, Tracy, to identify the available alternative sources of funds. The list is big. I mean, the dollars are big. And in terms of high level, we qualify across a broad spectrum. So we're rolling up our sleeves now and we're looking to bring in some of that, and I'm sure some of that will be there. But I don't have any specifics though to discuss that.

When we get grants, federal or otherwise, we will communicate that.

In addition to the 10-K being filed, there was an S-3 filed today. Could you please provide some more details about that filing?

Yes, absolutely.

Look, ever since 2012, we've always had and we always will have a Form S-3, which is essentially a registration statement quote unquote "on the shelf". It's only our fiduciary responsibility to ensure as a public company we have efficient access to the capital markets. The shelf is identical to the one that was there 3 weeks ago. It's identical to the one that was there 2 years ago. It's identical to the one that was there 10 years ago.

Having said that, it doesn't mean we don't have any plans to use the shelf, but we will as we need it to ensure liquidity and ensure our stability.

We're very excited about the valuation potential of this company. If you're talking about $15 billion in revenue, which I need to say, is a safe number. We're talking about $15 billion in revenue, okay? When you start thinking about multiples of that number, that's when you should start thinking about our valuation. Will there be more shares than 67 million outstanding? There will be, okay? But it pales in relative comparison to the value that's going to be created.

So I -- we're sitting in the best possible situation right now with a very tight shareholder base, with 67 million shares outstanding with the cleanest capital structure you'll find anywhere for growth of that value. And look, it's not a one-man show here. We've got 5 senior managers that work and are capable for [few] CEOs. This is a big endeavor and we're dedicating it with serious resources. And so that's the shelves.

Okay. And moving back to LINICO. Can you speak about the feedstock that you have there and specifically the relationship that you have with Aqua Metals?

Absolutely. Two questions, right?

So in terms of feedstock, we've been very happy today with sort of the realm of feedstock work that we've done. But it's been limited so intentionally to receiving as much of a variety of different feedstock as we could for development. For research and development, if you want to think of it that way. Our prototype, 6-ton per day prototype, is not small, and what it's designed to do, to not only produce the purest of black masses -- and by the way, our prototype is nearly identical to a full-scale system -- not only produce pure black masses, but evaluate the variety of feedstocks that come in that have nickel, manganese, cobalts, that have lithium carbonate, that -- there are at least 5 major types of these [LIBs] and plus all the different types that come from all the other devices.

So we're not only able to produce and sell black mass with this system, but we're going to use it primarily for putting through the most diverse array of feedstocks that we can get our hands on. And to that end, we're getting a lot of diverse arrays of feedstocks. Of course, we don't want large quantities of a diverse array of feedstocks. We want very small quantities to do all this testing. That's what we're doing, okay?

Secondly, we have secured the storage site. And if you look at the other companies up here in Northern Nevada that are delving into lithium ion battery recycling, everyone has done the same thing. I think we've done it best. They secured a site for processing. In our case, we have a state-of-the-art 137,000 square-foot battery metal recycling facility ready to go. What does ready to go mean? Just as an update. All of the facility was sterilized. Relating to the former owner, Aqua Metals, they paid for it. They took the lead out, okay? Secondly, we fully restored the refinery and the infrastructure of the building. It's done. It's ready to go.

Then secondly, you have to have a separate facility for storage. We secured a 200-acre site in Mound House, Nevada in immediate proximity to Highway 50, which is in immediate proximity to our facility in the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center. And that location will now undergo a relatively shorter permitting process that will allow storage of batteries. And so now we are engaging in counterparties to talk about and secure larger quantities of the right types of the right feedstocks to feed our facilities later this year. So we're happy with the progress. It's probably the area that's going to take on priority emphasis now that the other prerequisites are in place.

Now that we can receive any type of batteries from anybody and test it, that's one thing, and we can start to receive larger quantities of batteries and store them. We can't do that today, just to be clear, right? But we've secured the site, we're commencing the engineering, we'll get the permitting done. That's a 3 or 4-month process, okay? Timing is perfect for what we're trying to do. So it's all -- it's synchronized.

Corrado, that concludes our question-and-answer section.

I would like to thank everyone who attended the webcast today and submitted their questions. And I would like to turn (technical difficulty) [the] back to our Executive Chairman and CEO, Corrado De Gasperis, for his closing remarks.

Yes, my only closing remark is that we really worked hard tirelessly, our teams internally, to get a rewritten 10-K that most accurately, most completely reflects our company today. To put out a website, admittedly just a few pages, that accurately reflects our business today. And set ourselves up so that as we now engage the market, meeting battery providers, meeting off-takers, meeting investors.

When they go and look at who is Comstock Inc., they can read in the 10-K, they can read on the website. They can read it in the shareholder letter. They can see consistency of purpose. And just please, if you can in person, we'd love to see you on May 26 at the annual meeting. And certainly we'll be communicating with you between now and then, with our first quarter and the results that we talked about.

Thank you all for your interest and consideration.

Goodbye.