Comstock Inc (LODE) 2022 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Comstock Inc.'s 2022 first quarter business results webcast. Here is Comstock Inc.'s Executive Chairman and CEO, Mr. Corrado De Gasperis.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our first quarter update. I'll provide a business update, including the information in our press release from this morning and from our quarterly report filed on Form 10-Q last night. If you don't have a copy of today's press release, you'll find a copy on our website, www.comstock.inc at the top of the Investor page in the Newsroom section. Our Form 10-Q is also available on the website on the Investor page under SEC filings and also via EDGAR on www.sec.gov.

Please let me remind you that we will make forward-looking statements on this call, including specific outlooks for our Bioleum and LiNiCo businesses and the progress on our asset sales. Please understand that any statements related to matters that are not historical facts may constitute forward-looking statements. Our statements are based on the 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 and the SEC and in this morning's press release, and all forward-looking statements made during this call are subject to those same and other risks that we can't identify. Once we complete the prepared remarks, Zach will accept and direct all questions.

Let me briefly start with our financial position. Our recently reported assets totaled over $115 million, which includes the full consolidation of our LiNiCo business that we just acquired the substantial majority of in late December, and our balance sheet represents the foundation of our decarbonizing assets and our deep portfolio of intellectual property. This includes our IP for producing carbon-neutral cellulosic fuels and especially our breakthrough Bioleum product with multiple granted patents and pending patent applications.

It also includes our cellulosic fuel pilot and demonstration facility located in Wisconsin and currently being expanded to further demonstrate the production of carbon neutral pulps, paper, cellulosic sugar, ethanol and Bioleum. It includes our IP for lithium-ion battery crushing, separating and extraction, where we have now filed several provisional patent applications. And LiNiCo's state-of-the-art, 137,000-square-foot battery metal recycling facility here in Nevada, now cleaned, upgraded, prepared and deeply into the permitting process. And also LiNiCo's actual battery crushing and separating system currently being commissioned in Wisconsin and scheduled to be in Nevada later this year.

Our balance sheet also includes our strategic investments, all of them at cost like quantum generative materials and our equity in the Sierra Springs opportunity fund. And it includes our mineral properties, also at cost and now including Lucerne properties again, along with the rest of the 10,000 acre mineral district for which we are evaluating monetization options as well as our other real estate that we have already contracted for sale.

As you'll noticed in the 10-Q, these numbers now exclude MCU, reflecting the disappointment in the Philippines that we discussed just last month. The real estate assets contracted for sale and our Sierra Springs investment together represent nearly $30 million in fair value with $15 million in proceeds expected here in the near term. At the end of April, we had 69.9 million shares outstanding with our current market value trading below our adjusted book value and well, well below what we see as our fair value. We're working very hard in our near-term and intermediate objectives that I'm going to outline today are designed to unlock this value.

In fact, we're focused on delivering billions of dollars in future value from our renewable energy businesses. With our fuels, battery metal and engineering integration now complete, our entire organization is operating under one goal, which is to accelerate these high-growth decarbonizing technologies, while unlocking the value of our other assets by monetizing them.

Our newly integrated assets and teams represent decades of experience commercializing biofuels. We are now physically demonstrating our technology and building the capacity to rapidly enable continued product development for our customers. Our teams have already designed and built our breakthrough crushing and separating solution for advanced, pure, highly mineralized black mass from lithium-ion batteries, and we are currently advancing our existing extraction technology for lithium. When we proved just last year that we were capable of producing a carbon-neutral equivalent to petroleum in addition to the ethanol, we immediately filed a trademark for the name Bioleum, and we're continuing to expand an already significant patent portfolio to cover these breakthroughs.

As I mentioned on our last call, our senior leadership team will all be on hand later this month at our annual meeting in just a few weeks, on May 26, in Reno. Please do register and attend. Registration ends on Friday, where you can meet, speak and discuss our capabilities, further detail our processes, our technologies and our products and discuss our technology and near-term commercialization plans directly with our team, firsthand, face-to-face.

Let me expand a bit on renewable fuels. As I just mentioned, we have already created and trademarked a breakthrough alternative to fossil crude oil derived from the woody biomass called Bioleum that can be used in producing drop-in carbon-neutral fuels like diesel, like sustainable aviation fuel, leveraging the existing infrastructure. We've also established the near-term goal to commission our first 100-plus million-gallon Bioleum biorefinery by 2025.

We've commenced construction on a demonstration facility for production of Bioleum in Wisconsin. We've commenced site evaluation and selection process, prioritizing target sites with ready access to these available feedstocks. And we've commenced direct discussions for renewable fuel offtake agreements to support our first biorefinery and well beyond. Our broader portfolio of these technologies efficiently converts waste in the form of widely available woody biomass into these advanced cellulosic fuels. We can do this today, operating under existing incentive programs and existing regulations very profitably.

When we say waste, we mean sawdust, mill residuals, slash that no one else is using for high value fuels. That work perfectly for us. There is an abundance of this feedstock generated annually in the United States alone. There is twice as much in Canada. So our plans are to rapidly build, deploy, own and operate a fleet of this advanced carbon-neutral extraction and refining facilities using these widely available feedstocks.

Our 2 major near-term objectives include operationalizing and the demonstration system for Bioleum in Wisconsin and announcing our first offtake contract, both which will occur in the second half of this year. Our differences position our fuels business for billions in enterprise value just based on current comps of public companies with less capable technology, much less carbon impact and absent the feedstocks to sustain exponential growth. Plus we have the team. Our engineering technology and management teams have extensive experience exploring solutions in the renewable fuels industry. Having now designed and built over 20 large industrial renewable fuel facilities over the past 15 years and also having commercialized breakthrough extracted oils that are widely used in the biofuel industry today.

Remembering that just one of our biorefineries alone can produce over a 100 million gallons of biofuel per year, including over 80 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol and 30 million gallons of renewable diesel, again, per year from just 1 million metric tons of woody biomass. Each refinery is expected to produce well over $0.5 billion in annual revenue. Our first offtake agreements will clearly demonstrate our capability and potential and more importantly prove the value potential.

Let me now turn to LiNiCo where we have made tremendous progress in the past few months, where we've hired our new President, Leo Riera, who has hit the ground running and is already living here in Reno, working from the LiNiCo facility every day. We've also received and installed our proprietary lithium-ion battery crushing and separating system that we are now commissioning in our R&D facility in Wisconsin, and we have already crushed batteries, a huge milestone. And we've secured our new 200-acre storage facility in immediate proximity and already commenced the local permitting process on that storage facility.

We are on schedule to be producing highly pure black mass in our Nevada facility, and we have just commenced construction of our prototype lithium first extraction system in our R&D facility and we're scheduled to be producing marketable battery-grade lithium carbonate in our battery metal facility in Nevada by the end of Q2 2023.

And lastly, we have continued and commenced new ongoing discussion with feedstock sources, especially with our storage site now secured. Things are moving fast as everyone can see, EV registrations continue to explode, having more than doubled in 2021. Even the most conservative estimates for increases in EV demand will likely require about 5x more lithium carbonate than the entire lithium mining industry produces today.

The conventional recycling process that we are seeing deployed suffer from extremely high, if not total losses of the lithium. Our technologies meet the reality of 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 allow us to be profitable at very low production levels by putting lithium first.

Our near-term outlook and objectives for the next 6 months here include completing the validation of our crushing and separating system this quarter, completing the validation of our lithium extraction process in the third quarter, receiving our written determination for the Nevada recycling facility and our conditional use permit for the newly acquired storage facility also in the third quarter. All of which enable us to start announcing our feedback supply agreements also during that same third quarter.

As I mentioned, our first commercial prototype, the 6 ton per day crushing and separating system is being commissioned as we speak. We have already demonstrated our ability to safely crush batteries, and we'll soon be producing high-purity black mass. This positions LiNiCo to also contribute billings in value. Again based on existing valuations of comparable public companies and our perceived competitive advantages that we're about to start demonstrating. We are now in the markets, speaking with partners, feedstock providers, customers for offtake and investors with great perception.

Let me just conclude with the monetization of our other assets. We made real progress here as well during the last 3 -- the first 3 months of this year. We completed a material transaction with Tonogold in the first quarter that paid us over $1.25 million in cash, and we exchanged the $6.65 million note due to us for all of the Lucerne properties. So we have regained full ownership of all of the mineral assets covering the entire district. Tono has an option to repurchase Lucerne and will continue reimbursing us to the tune of approximately $3-plus million this year for the cost of maintaining the mining platform and certain other mining property payments.

We are scheduled to close on the Daney Ranch this quarter with over $2.5 million in proceeds, and we are confident we will close on the $10 million in proceeds from our Silver Springs properties later this year. So in summary, we're commercializing 2 incredible renewable energy businesses with specific near-term objectives that I just outlined here today, and they are right in front of us.

These objectives and the systems we are bringing online will demonstrate credible, operable technology, scalable manufacturing capability and be complemented with the market validation from new feedstock and offtake agreements, which we're now ready for. The proceeds from the asset sales will support funding our new operating businesses while aligning substantially all of our focus towards cellulosic fuels and lithium-ion battery metals. We believe this will unlock the highest and best value to all of our shareholders.

Zach, let me stop there and turn to questions. Do we have our first question?

Yes. We have our first question. There are other companies claiming biofuels and offtake agreements. How are you really different from them?

Thanks, Zach. Thank you for the question. So first, our technologies use waste wood that is unfunded and inexpensive. Literally a fraction of what these other companies are using like corn or vegetable oils. Corn today is over $300 a ton and we are less than 1/3 of that, much less. The carbon impact of these fuels is also much lower, so we get maximum revenue credit for our fuels.

Critically, our feedstocks are abundant and widely available, positioning us for highly profitable and nearly unlimited growth. Said differently, everyone else is constrained by feedstock, whereas we are not. All of this was true when we acquired the technology for cellulosic ethanol. However, the ethanol only uses half of the feedstock fed into the system. Our biggest breakthrough was cracking the code on the other half of the wood.

Bioleum takes a profitable model and adds another revenue stream from the same feedstock, not the same type of feedstock, the same ton of wood. We can now extract the carbon neutral equivalent to petroleum from the rest of the wood, turning another waste stream into diesel, aviation fuel and other coproducts. So we're sitting with a profitable model with a 70 million gallon facility that now can make a 110 million gallons with no more feedstock, and it drops right into the truck, drops right into the plane using the existing infrastructure and it drops right to our bottom line, call that pure throughput.

We have a second question Zach, please?

Yes. The next question is you said your battery crushing and separating system would be online in the second quarter. What happened?

Thank you, Zach. Our crushing and separating system arrived in April. And we have already been successful, like I just mentioned, in crushing lithium-ion batteries, just last month in Wisconsin. The full system is being commissioned there as we speak and we will be producing black mass from that very same system very soon.

We have a very sophisticated crushing technology that can crush charged batteries, a critically important differentiation, and purifies the black mass while preserving the lithium, another huge differentiator. We have now also begun constructing the lithium extraction system in Wisconsin. So what we did was we expanded and resubmitted our primary operating permit to include both this new crusher in addition to the systems that were already included in the first permit submission and the lithium extractor, a first and major differentiator, and we expect that permit in the third quarter and then the air quality permit in the fourth quarter.

We'll then plan on moving the crushing and separating system to Nevada, coincident with the permits, so we can operate when all permits are approved. And as I said earlier, will be followed by the lithium extraction in the second quarter of next year. To be fair, we'll be the first and fastest to crush and separate the purest black masses in the industry and for sure be the first to be extracting lithium first.

Okay. Corrado, our next question is, it seems like the media never writes about us. What are we doing about marketing?

Thank you for the question. That's a very good question. So we spent most of the last 8 or 9 months, not only integrating the operations and integrating the team, which is now complete. But also in finalizing the plans for marketing and communicating all of this information. It took a major change in our public disclosures, which are now complete. And it allowed us to put up our new website, which has been a put up and we love and is beginning of now the channel for much more extensive expansion, including information about LiNiCo, including information about cellulosic fuels. And now we are just over the last few weeks, commenced outreach into the market. That outreach is, includes investors, it includes customers and includes feedstock providers, and we've got everything in place now to back that up.

So we're actually very excited about what's now coming forward in the context of marketing and communications. And just to give further insight, we've got a dedicated team that is now working daily on just the notions of communicating these technologies, of communicating our capabilities and making sure that people understand not only what we have, but how different it really is.

Corrado, our next question is about Dayton and Spring Valley. Is a new reserve report coming out now that you have Lucerne back?

Good question. Thank you. So we saw that Tonogold published the results of their technical report, which is for the Lucerne properties. We're very happy that that information is fully current and updated and that there's a mineral resource there of meaning. We are planning to publish the technical report for Dayton and Spring Valley sometime here in the second quarter. We're confident the process is advanced. It's gone much lower than we expected, but the third-party mineral consultant is fully engaged, and we expect that here in the second quarter. So, we would have technical reports that essentially, in combination, cover the entire district.

Okay. How are supplier agreements coming with the battery recycling business? And are there any more regulatory or permitting processes to be completed?

From a regulatory process, I'll hit the second part of the question first. We filed a written determination, which is the primary operating permit. I just mentioned that we expanded it meaningfully to not only include expanding a more sophisticated crushing and separating, but also lithium extraction. So that one is on -- we think it's ahead in terms of the substance and timing, we expect it here during the third quarter. We have an air quality permit at the facility that we are modifying now for those name changes, and we expect that in the fourth quarter. The storage facility that we just acquired, we've already submitted the pre-application that kicks off the local permitting process. That process is only local and has much shorter lead times. So we'd expect that also in the third quarter. So from a permitting process, things are excellent.

From an engagement of the market process, from a feedstock perspective, it's critically important that you can demonstrate that you have a facility that is in the process of being permitted. And it's even more important that you have a storage site that's in the process of being permitted. So to answer the question, we've had a tremendous number of extremely positive conversations, very, very receptive. We don't see any disadvantages in there. On the contrary, we see some huge advantages given our platform that we now have in position.

And now we have the specificity to be able to start entering into formal agreements and immediately thereafter, start receiving feedstock. So we're very excited about where we've come. It was a long time coming. We frankly feel like we're ahead of most everyone out, and we always wish it could go faster.

Corrado, our next question is, what are your top 3 deliverables in the next 3 to 6 months to increase shareholder value?

So I think we mentioned more than 3. I can just hide like 3. Let's say, with LiNiCo, obviously, the ability to demonstrate the crushing and separating in the highly pure black mass that's coming this quarter.

With LiNiCo to be able to demonstrate lithium extraction that's coming and then the permits that will follow it will allow us to fully demonstrate those capabilities in Nevada. So all that, except for lithium extraction, which we will demonstrate our capability but not deploy the final system in Nevada until next year. All of that is happening in this year, okay? So those are the most immediate and really demonstrating the manufacturing and technology capability is there.

In Bioleum, our ability to 2 things to commission the system that will occur this year. So we already have the ability to take woody biomass and produce cellulosic sugar and ultimately, ethanol, but we're expanding that capability to be able to also demonstrate Bioleum. That will be done by the end of this year. And just as importantly, if not maybe more importantly than the market, our first offtake agreement for those fuels.

Okay. Following up on the Bioleum, is there any residual waste from the cellulosic fuel business? Is it hazardous or sellable material like for fertilizer?

Yes. No, they're the initial model, there is -- there was residual waste that was basically targeted for burning as cleaner fuel, as a replacement to natural gas. With the Bioleum breakthrough, we will use a substantial majority of that material for even higher value end products. So that's remarkable. There may -- any of the residual woody biomass waste has productive use in high-end low-end product uses. So it's an extraordinarily circular zero-waste operation.

After paying off our previous debt, we are now back up to $5 million in debt. Why is that?

So we took advantage of the opportunity to get some very good promissory notes in place. It provided a nice bridge for us as we were kicking off some of the activities. Those amounts are very, very low relative to some of the asset sales that are about to occur and we committed, as part of that, that when some of those asset sales occur, those debts will be paid off. So just with the Daney Ranch alone, you'd see more than half of that debt reduced and we like that profile. We like the profile today of having little to no debt prior to launching and commercializing new businesses.

Your $12 share price target, do you still feel comfortable with that number and is your time line still intact?

So our -- the $12 share target is low. The $12 share target was obviously communicated before the launching of these businesses. So we not only feel confident with that target and the time line. We're looking way, way past it just with the commercialization of LiNiCo and cellulosic fuels. So we're going to break out of this year as soon as we start demonstrating and the market appreciates not only what our real capability is, but how different it is from our competitors.

With regard to the selling of non-mining assets, such as the Dailly Ranch and the property in Silver Springs, how are the sales prices compared to what you paid for those properties?

Yes. I mean, in all cases, we -- in every case of our balance sheet and the properties in our balance sheet, they're stated at very, very low costs, very, very low cost. So I think in the worst-case scenario, we're getting twice the value that we paid and the other case is much, much more than that in the ranch case much, much more than that.

Can you please describe Kevin Chrysler's position as President and CFO and how he became a major shareholder at over 5% of the company?

Absolutely. So Kevin you know is absolutely a critical part of our senior team as President and CFO. But I'll tell you, we have a lot of bench strength now. So the specific answer is when we acquired Plain Sight Innovations, which had all of the cellulosic technology embedded in it, including our Wisconsin R&D and pilot and demonstration facility. Kevin, came on board as part of that acquisition.

But the real answer to the question is when, and I mentioned this on the last call, between Kevin, Billy McCarthy, Rahul Bobbili, David Winsness, we have a senior team with decades of experience in commercializing these types of technologies. So Kevin was involved in commercializing a new extraction technology across the entire biofuel industry, which has over 90%, 95% penetration as we talk today. Rahul has led the effort in building over 20 biorefineries at large scale over the last 15 years and the team's ability to not only scale up, but operate these businesses is reflected in what we've accomplished in just over the last 3 or 4 months. So there was a lot of acquisition and integration activity in 2021.

But I think you're just starting to see the beginning from the results we announced this morning of how fast things are moving and how much we are achieving. We're going to be much more pedantic in terms of outlook. You've already seen it in this press release. We're going to be talking to you about the next 3 to 6 months, right? We're going to build the credibility of this technology. We're going to build the credibility of this manufacturing capability, and we're going to build the credibility of this team based on delivering what we say we're going to deliver. We'll let the markets start to figure out how big the potential is. It's clearly done it for some of the other companies that we believe have inferior technology and inferior capabilities. And we just think it's a matter of time before it figures it out for us. To the earlier question, the marketing and communications has just started in that regard.

Recently, you were at the Noble Conference. Are we seeing any new investor interest and could we potentially see any partnerships in the future?

We're seeing tremendous new investor interest, and we're seeing tremendous partnership opportunities, and we're going to be very selective in that context, right? So it's very good news. I'll tell you personally, it's taken -- I've have gone from taking 10% to 15% of my time to taking more than 50% of my time, and I expect that to continue as we engage the markets more and more here going forward.

Do you have any update on the consulting contract discussions previously mentioned in the biomass business space?

We are engaged. I'm not sure exactly what that reference is to, but we are engaged, right, both on the feedstock and the partner levels in that space. And I think that's consistent with our new guidance that we'll be announcing offtake here in the second half of this year.

Okay. And our next question is, what is your plan to increase more analyst exposure for the stock?

Yes, that just follows right on to my last point. We're getting a lot of interest. We are engaging numerous discussions from investors and even banking communities alike and we'll be very selective as we move forward in expanding our coverage with relevant, knowledgeable professionals in the space.

Okay. The next question, several gold and silver companies are using load in their company names. Do we have any rights to the load name? And if so, are we pursuing legal primitives.

We have the NYSE listing. That's all right, nobody else has that. I guess, I would say lightly that there's only one Comstock low. I don't know what to say. There everyone else's opposer.

And our next question, does your asset value include your tax credits, your intellectual property, the gold equivalent value of any proven reserves?

Yes. No, it's a great question. So none of our mineral resources, the resources that have been now disclosed in the Lucerne 100,000 ounces of gold and millions of ounces of silver or the ones that we're about to disclose for the Dayton. Those are resource estimates, not reserves, to be clear. It's one step removed from a full reserve, but it's very, very strong resource estimates. Those are not present on our balance sheet in any way, shape or form. Even the underlying land that houses in situ, those mineral resources are fractionally reflected on our balance sheet at very, very, very low original costs. Can you repeat this -- the other part of the question, I'm sorry?

Yes. Let me get back to that.

Oh, the Intellectual property. Yes. The intellectual property is also recorded on the balance sheet in the form of intangibles. But you're talking about $12 million, $14 million, $15 million for something with billions of dollars of value. So it's a good comment. We have a $115 million of assets on our balance sheet, representing just a tiny fraction in our opinion, right? Of the real fair value of what we're about to do here. And I mentioned here, right, that we have patents, the portfolio patents. We have new patents pending on the breakthroughs that we've had just over the last 12 months. And we have a tremendous amount of know-how embedded in our team to deploy these processes. Most none of that would be reflected on the balance sheet.

Okay. And we're still getting a few questions about MCU.

Sure.

And so people would like to know what the current status is and how the process works.

Yes. So 2 things, right? The current status is, we're fully winding down the operation in the Philippines. We were very disappointed at the lack of the mercury/gold content that we expected in the river to be true and to be fair. Every sample hole that we drilled all of along the river had mercury and gold content. It was just much, much lower than we thought it was going to be. And that was indicated previously that it could have been. So that was a big disappointment.

Our joint venture partner in the Philippines is exceptional. And so all of our equipment is being safely contained and stored on his campus and on his side. And so that's all-in progress. I actually expect it will be done by the end of this week. Look, these systems are sophisticated alluvial mining systems. If they were operating and the area where there was no market contamination, they could still extract and retreat gold.

There's value to the assets and we're assessing now the best way to fully wind down and monetize that. But we're moving forward. Like we just have to be very frank with this. I have never ever in my career been confronted with an opportunity like cellulosic fuels. I've never, in my career, been confronted with an explosive market like what's happening in EVs. We are very focused on our future responsibility to deliver the highest best shareholder value, and we think these 2 lines of businesses are just incredible in terms of their potential, and we want to ensure that this bigger, broader, deeper management team is fully dedicated to the renewable energy.

Okay. The next question is about Tonogold. Will they be able to meet their obligations to Comstock?

Tono has today met their obligations. They never seem to be ahead of schedule quite frankly, they're not hardly ever on schedule, but they do get there. and they've just gone through a major restructuring. They've gone through a major management change and from what we're understanding a highly professional reconfiguration of their Board. So we're optimistic that all of these positive developments will allow them to get back on track and progress the drilling and development, and we'll see. The good news is we have monetized a tremendous amount of value from those mineral properties to date, almost $30 million, and we have 100% ownership and control of the entire district.

That could put us in a position to have the most marketable, monetizable asset with full control sitting in our hands. I'm happy about that. We're working with them. We want them to be successful. They have the potential to be successful. Let's see how it goes. Okay. And the next question is for investor confidence, how are the new ventures being handled differently than MCU, so they don't run the same course. That's an excellent question.

First, let me highlight and this is not a deflection of responsibility. I personally take full responsibility for MCU, but we only had a 25% interest in MCU. We were not the management for tens, okay? We very much love the social impact and the financial impact that it could have delivered, but it didn't, okay? With Comstock, we have a management team. I mean, I've never seen anything like this, and it's going to be much more visible to you starting at the annual meeting.

If at least 5, and I say at least 5, certainly 5 people that have been CEOs that have run businesses. And I have never worked with a team of people on such a peer level so productively. The brutal honesty, the passion, the intellectual horsepower, the commitment to decarbonizing profitably, right, is something that I can't express to you well enough, which is why I really would love you to come to the annual meeting to see for yourself, but that's the difference, right?

One of my team, one common goal, working 24/7 to achieve something meaningful, meaningful in terms of decarbonization, meaningful in terms of financial impact, meaningful in terms of social impact. Let me say that we have taken great pains and elegantly designed a system where the rate that we generate cash is synonymous with the rate that we decarbonize.

Every gallon that we produce helps the environment and makes money. I don't know how to say it any simpler. There's no conflict in our organization between doing good and decarbonizing and making money. It's a very unique thing and when people realize it and they see the speed at which it does throughput is a rate, when they see the speed at which it does it, they're not going to be able to calculate fast enough the impact. And that's when we'll have -- that's -- we have something special, and that's when people will start to really realize it.

Corrado, you referenced our annual meeting in a few weeks on Thursday, May 26 in Reno at the Atlantis Hotel. Can you please provide us with some more details about the annual meeting? And if it will be online or webcast via Zoom.

Happily. Thank you for that question. So the meeting starts first thing in the morning on the 26th. We will all be there. That means our expanded board, including Kristin Slanina and Kevin Kreisler. That means our full management team, okay?

So we will all be there. We will spend the entire morning going through, yes, the normal protocols of an annual meeting, but also an update and an insight to what these amazing businesses are about to do. We have models of the business processes. We have samples of our products, very, very tangible, where you can engage in touch. And we would expect to -- that the formal part of the meeting is typically about 3 hours, let's say, 9% to 12%, and we'd expect to be engaged at least till mid-afternoon to 2:30, where then we will have some other business activities to follow.

So we would look very much forward to speaking directly to our shareholders for all of that activity. In terms of the virtual versus live, we will certainly be live. That's the whole basis of what we're doing. And we will take the opportunity in that meeting to videotape the presentations and the proceedings so that it will be available to all others thereafter. It won't live stream because there's just so many activities going on. It'd be like a reality TV show we can't handle that. So we'll be available afterwards but not during.

Okay. Thank you for that. And then I don't know if you can speak to this directly, but in a general sense, has there been any dialogue with companies like Tesla or Panasonic?

There have been dialogues with companies in the EV industry, absolutely.

Okay.

We can't disclose which ones until -- we won't disclose which ones until we have agreements, and we're telling people specifics.

Okay. And then we've had a few questions about MCU possibly being used in the states or on American flats here on the Comstock LODE?

The systems can operate anywhere where there's alluvium, anywhere where there's materials that can be processed either to remove the metals or to remove the contaminations. The system that is here on Comstock was designed as a pilot system, not as a full production system. System in the Philippines was a production system. So there is no prohibition to where those systems could operate. They were designed to be mobile. So yes.

Okay. And the next question, can you tell us a little more information about [Genmab]?

Genmab is part of our R&D. It's a hardcore longer-term part of our R&D. We really don't have -- we don't -- we have a policy not to discuss things that are predevelopment and in development. As I stated earlier, we're going to talk specifically about the things that we're going to be delivering in the next 3 to 6 months. We won't be talking about the R&D that's going on in Wassa other than that, and we won't be talking about the developments that are happening with Genmab other than that.

Okay. And the next question is about our commemorative silver medallions and they would like to know how many of those remain.

So there's not many that are remaining. It's remarkable how -- I mean, literally, someone's asking for them all the time. So it's not huge quantities of requests, but there's just continued request. So they're dwindling down. I mean I don't -- I haven't looked at the inventory, but if there was a 100, I would be surprised.

Yes. That sounds like about the right quantity remaining. Okay. The next question, this person would like to know if we have any technical papers that can show what the prototypes we have can produce such as the black mass or biofuels as something that could be shown to the market.

Yes. I think that we have a tremendous amount of technical information and we'll have to assess once our broader patents are filed, how beneficial it would be to us to publish information. I think that most likely will occur in some form. But I would focus the most important thing, which is our ability to demonstrate at scale what these systems can do, right? When people can touch it and kick it, they're going to know that it works.

Okay. And this investor would like to know how the new ventures will be handled differently than MCU?

So I think I answered that. I'm just going to reemphasize that rather than being once removed and a governor of a business, we're fully engaged in control and operating the businesses. So we don't have any other passive business interest, right? Cellulosic fuel is 100% owned, then it grow almost 90% owned. We control, plan, communicate and execute every single day. That's our job. That wasn't our job at MCU, but that's our job with cellulosic fuels and battery metals.

Okay. The next question. Why did the Mana agreement fall through?

So Mana, well, it did and it didn't, right? Because a big part of our management team, including our Chief Operating Officer and our Head of Business Development and quite a bit of our marketing communications team were joined to us via that acquisition. What didn't work out is the agreement to produce some biomass in Idaho. And frankly, we diligenced the heck out of it and it just was nowhere near as effective and nowhere near powerful as the 2 business that we're operating. It was disappointing that, that happened, but it was also joyful, right, that we made the right decision, and it's enabled us to accelerate what we're doing in our 2 core businesses now.

So every decision we've made in the last 8 months, has been to enhance and strengthen our focus on the businesses that bring the shareholders the largest value. I think, frankly, the ability to say we made a mistake, the ability to not spend or allocate capital to things that aren't best for our shareholders is a strong ability. And I think it should be reflected not just of my leadership of the entire management team, right, who challenges each other for what's best for our shareholders and what's best for our value. And that was an example of it. It was a hard decision. It wasn't a devastating decision. It was -- we were evaluating it. We started moving into it. And we just couldn't prove what we needed to prove to ensure we could deliver to our shareholders, and we very efficiently move away from it. We got all of our shares back, right? And we were thrilled by that, right? So we're moving forward fast.

Pivoting back to mining, are you going to try to market the mining operations?

Yes, we're going to, right? There's a high level of interest in the entire district. There was a lot of value supported by the technical reports and we're going to do -- look its capital allocation decision. If you could deliver hundreds of billions of value in cellulose and fuels, right? Where do you want to put your capital or where do you want to put your resources where do you want to put your team. So we made that decision.

Okay. And the next question, can you please describe the raises that were recently awarded?

Yes. Look, when we did the acquisitions, and we brought the team on, we came in at below market value. That was done by necessity, right? We needed to get started right away. We didn't have necessarily the resources right away, and we did something on a necessity. I don't think anybody would benchmark any of our salaries or any of our compensation today or over the last 5 years as being anything other than below market, okay?

So what I love about this team is that their passion, their commitment, their dedication to decarbonize is second to none, right? These are incredibly experienced, incredibly knowledge, but also incredibly dedicated people. We have something special here, right? Come to the annual meeting, you'll see how special it is. It's just remarkable.

Is it possible to get pictures of the current crushing system. Does investor believes that would help the share price and also updates to investors that aren't aware of everything that the company is doing.

Yes. We will expand the visual repertoire. We will absolutely start to show visuals as it's appropriate, okay? So when the system is up when it's fully visible, we're testing parts of it now and very soon to test the full integrated. When those things are available, we'll show them. When, do you see the inside of the facility, both the main crushing and separating areas as well as the refining areas, they'll be very impressive, okay? And so when appropriate as due over the next 6 months as these things start coming online and we're announcing their completions, we'll add some visual aids to that occasion, and we're happy to do that.

Okay. And the next question, John Winfield used to be a large shareholder in LODE. What is his position now?

John remains a large shareholder. John is an supportive shareholder and John is an example of probably a dozen shareholders that have been, you know, with the company for over 5 years. And in his case, over 10.

Okay. And a quick follow-up question on the silver medallions. What are those being sought for? What's the price?

So those medallions were, commemorate the sesquicentennial, right, the 150-year anniversary of Nevada as a state, which was founded based on the silver and the strength of the financial contact role. So, we charge $100.50, to commemorate the 150 years.

Okay. Yes. And you made those back in 2014?

2014, that was a sesquicentennial, so the states now like 150 years old. Okay. Let's see -- the shareholder would like to know if we have a backup funding plan and how close are we to selling our non-mining assets.

So our non-mining assets are, as I mentioned, the Daney Ranch in the second quarter and the rest of it right into this year, we're highly confident about that. And that confidence isn't superficial. There's been a tremendous amount of activity in Silver Springs. There's been a tremendous amount of value appreciation in Silver Springs, but more importantly, there are large capital pools coming into Silver Spring. So that will enable us to complete what we've contracted for, and we're very happy about that. And we do have funding alternatives that are in place, the capital needed to get through this pilot and scale facilities is all in our plan. It's all laid out over the next 9 months, and we're capital fine to get through all of this. And our plans, frankly, are to move as fast as possible. The market opportunities are there for us immediately. So we want to make sure that we get to the markets immediately. Okay. Corrado, we're approaching the top of the hour.

Sure, no more questioning.

Yes, one more question. First, the statement. Thank you. Nice presentation. That was the statement. And then this person would like you to tell us when we are going to be driving a semi-truck fueled bio-EM across the country?

That's a great question. So look, we said that we are targeting our first facility by 2025, right? That sounds like a far away, but it's not that far away, right? We will have full demonstration capabilities by the end of this year. that will ultimately translate into announcing our first site. And then once that's arranged and everything is in place, it's 2 years from that point, right? But what will be even more exciting is that most of these aviation companies, most of these transportation companies, all of this sweeping mobility have committed to carbon targets that they mathematically cannot achieve.

And so we will be signing offtake arrangements that will support and enable the first facility and many facilities beyond. And so the real answer to that question is very, very soon because our fuels are dropping, right? So in case anybody is not clear, like we're talking about fuels that work in the existing infrastructure.

We're talking about fuels, that run trucks, that run plan. We've seen the explosion of EVs, but even in the most aggressive EV projections, if you get to 10% of the market, that means 150 million electronic vehicles on the road. It also means 1.5 billion fuel burning vehicles on the road. So we couldn't be better positioned to grab the growth of EV, but the big game is in liquid fuels, and we have the carbon neutral solution.

Thank you, everyone. We look forward to not only see you at the annual meeting, but the communications that will come out of that meeting, we're very excited about. Thank you.