Comstock Inc.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining Comstock, Inc.' 's first quarter, 2026, results and business outlook. I'm Zach Spencer, treasurer and corporate secretary. Today is Thursday, May 7th, 2026. We are streaming live, and this session is being recorded. Our recording will be posted shortly after we adjourn in the investor relations section of our website. Today, we filed our Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2026, and issued a press release summarizing quarter end results. Both documents are available on our website. As a reminder, ComSoc is listed on NYSE American with the ticker LODE, L-O-D-E. Joining me today are Corrado DeGasparis, Comstock's Chief Executive Officer, and Judd Merrill, Comstock's Chief Financial Officer. After their prepared remarks, we will take questions. We received more than 25 questions in advance of the call. If you have additional questions during the call, please use the Zoom Q&A window, and we will address as many as time allows. Today's discussion will include forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially due to risks and uncertainties detailed in our SEC filings. Full risk disclosures can be found in our filings on the Investor Relations page and on the SEC website. With that, it is my pleasure to introduce our Chief Financial Officer, Jud Merrill. Jud, you may begin.

Thanks, Zach, and good afternoon, everyone. I have a few prepared remarks, and then we'll move on through the slide deck here. The first quarter of 2026 reflects a continuation of the transformation we drove in 2025, but more importantly, it marks the beginning of execution at scale. We are now transitioning from a period of decline by successful balance sheets recapitalization, institutional banking, and capital formation, and expanded and enhanced governance into a period focused on operational development, commercialization, and monetization. Here are a few comments on the first quarter. As we discussed in our last investor call earlier this year, we completed an oversubscribed equity financing of $57.5 million in gross proceeds and $53 million net of offering expenses. Our cash balance at the end of the first quarter was just over $53 million, and this is after $14 million that's already been paid between August 2025 and March 31st, 2026, and that's for our first facility. And funds for our future recovery solutions for producing silver and copper and other metals is estimated at $10 million, and our second facility is estimated at $13 million, and that won't be deployed until our first is up and running and scaling and is profitable. Of that first $14 million for the first industry-scale facility, which many of you have registered to come and see on May 28th during our AGM, $6.8 million was used in the first quarter, and now substantially all the capital expenditures for our first plant have been completed. We also invested $7.75 million in SSOF, And this was at very attractive valuation. And after we committed to natural gas that can power up to 300 megawatts of power to those and to the other Comstock properties in Silver Springs. And now we're positioned for a higher value monetization. We also recognize 1.4 million cash gain on the sale of royalty rights associated with the prior sale of our northern mining claims. reflecting continued progress in monetizing these non-core assets. And separately, we have also now agreed on preliminary terms for selling all of our remaining mining assets, and we're now in the due diligence process with the expectation of announcing a definitive agreement in the third quarter. Should this transaction happen, it would result in significant simplification, meaningful cash, cleaner and stronger balance sheets, and meaningful upside in annual cost savings. We recognized revenue in the quarter from our pilot plant and deferred revenue from solar panel collections, and we are now starting to see both revenue and deferred revenue increase as we move forward this year as we bring the commercial plant online and begin showcasing it to customers in June. Total operating expenses. increased approximately $1.7 million, driven primarily by higher headcount supporting metals operations, higher facility costs, including our industry scale site at Silver Springs, increased professional, legal, and commercialization-related spend, as we expect marketing and sales and metals expenses going forward, and also associated with various monetization transactions. From a below-the-line perspective, interest expense declined significantly year over year, and that's reflecting the elimination of the legacy debt obligations. And even as of this week, we're fully extinguished with no interest expense projected going forward. And then interest income increased meaningfully, driven by a strong cash position. And then derivative-related impacts, while still present, were less significant than in prior years, should be low to zero going forward with substantially all of our make-hole contingencies now satisfied. That loss for the quarter was approximately $9.4 million, largely in line with prior year levels, with approximately half of that loss representing the mining and biolumine segments, and the other half representing metals and the corporation. We expect the sale of the mining assets to reduce cash spending by up to $1.5 million annually, And we also expect the resulting simplification to further reduce cost. Operationally, what matters here most is the quality and the timeliness of the execution underway. The increases that we have seen in operating expense are intentional. They reflect planned build-out of operational capacity, design and deployment of quality systems and industry scale, supporting infrastructure, including infrastructure operations and sales and logistics. And we're also investing in the teams and systems required to support multi-site growth. And at the same time, the reduction in legacy financing, mining, and administrative costs and simplification of our capital structure has begun to show through in our financials. From a liquidity and capital standpoint, we remain in a very strong position. As we previously outlined, we are funded, Following our recent financings, we have eliminated substantially all of our legacy obligations and associated costs, and we've closed on some smaller sales and agreed to other mining and continued advancing multiple monetization pathways for our non-core assets, which we will believe will be significant. And so what does this do? It positioned us to scale and operate our fully paid-for first-of-a-kind industry scale facility expand metal storage and logistic capacity in multiple states, finalize our first metal recovery designs, and pilot a one-time-per-day system, preferably at our existing location here in Nevada, and then secure, permit, and advance our second facility in Las Vegas. So looking forward, the financial model begins to change. As we move into 2026, we expect a shift from project-based revenue to throughput. throughput-driven revenue. We expect improving unit economics as feasibility scale. We expect the facility to be profitable at 20% utilization and the corporation as a whole at 50% utilization. So that is our focus. At the same time, we remain highly dedicated on monetizing legacy mining and real estate assets and also advancing the FSOF-related opportunities, and then accessing non-dilutive capital sources, including grants and industrial financing. So, in summary, Q1 was successfully about positioning, deployment, and readiness, and the rest of 2006 is execution at scale and monetizing our mining and real estate assets. I will now turn it over to Corrado to go deeper into our operational progress and what we are seeing on the ground at Metals. Corrado?

Thanks, Judd. Yeah, no, it's an outstanding overview. We position ourselves to monetize these assets, just as Judd has outlined. We're doing it in mining. We're doing it in SSOF. And it's all to support the growth of Metals. So let's go into Metals. I know that we spoke... it two or three weeks ago you know with the year-end report um i have to say that um an incredible amount has occurred in the last three weeks so i've been actually looking forward to this update you know with with metals especially you know we we've now received deployed we're assembling and commissioning the facility many of you as judge said will be out on the 28th to see it quite a few of you have come out over the last two months you know since january And every time someone visits, even if it's three or four days in between or a whole week, the plant looks remarkably different. This will be not only the first industry scale, high speed, high throughput, zero landfill solution, but it will be a showcase for everyone, frankly, but most importantly, our customers. Our customers are gaining strong traction They're strategic, they're regional, they're national. They understand as we engage them what we intend to do, but we will be able to show them as soon as June. And many have already scheduled appointments to visit in June and in July when we will be operating our first industry scale facility. in Silver Springs. Of course, our objective, as Judd said, is to turn it profitable, ramping it up to 20% utilization, 50% utilization, and of course, we want to run it full. We're also working on upgrading the downstream production line. You'll see the CapEx, you know, that so far has been remarkably in line with our plan, but we've also stepped downstream to enhance recoveries specifically for glass. And we're already able to do that today. And as John said, by the end of this year, we'd like to have a one ton per day fully integrated metal recovery capability. We're not using the term refining. This is the last time Fortunato said I could use the word refining. We're recovering these metals to extremely high purities. And We are already recovering glass now to specifications that even two months ago we didn't know that we could do. And the result of that, I'm going to go into a little deeper now, but it's resulted in a number of extremely large-scale companies that want to use our glass for things like you know, fiber optics for things like cement additives, a whole spectrum of uses. So we're upgrading the production line. We're going to be enhancing recoveries. And we shifted from, frankly, worrying about, you know, where is all this class going to find a home? We were worried about it in a professional sense. You know, we were working very diligently on finding it a home. Initially, the values of those homes were pretty low. their high and their forces for those materials. That's a tremendous update, maybe one of the most salient for this discussion in the last three weeks. We've also identified our second facility. We've already submitted the permits for that facility. We met with our regulators two days ago. It's an extremely positive advance forward. We won't, as Judd said, procure for our second facility until our first one's up and running, and frankly, until it's up and running and scaling up in terms of the throughput that's going through that machine. So we have a nice ability to toggle that amount. You've heard from us more often than not that the silver demand and the market for silver is strong. It's driven by photovoltaics, it's driven by electronics, but the deficit in the industry, you know, which is reasonably nascent, you know, over the last half a decade. It is clearly persistent. China seems to have a bigger implication to that persistence. So the outlook, of course, for silver, which, you know, exceeded 80 bucks a share, announced yesterday and is hovering right about $80 an ounce today, remains very strong. Insofar as our process, The way to think about our offtake is that aluminum is steady eddy. We've been selling our aluminum cleanly, clean aluminum since day one. It's absolutely the lowest maintenance part of our offtake stream. The tailings, we've been selling, most of you know, to less than optimal refiners. I guess the good news updating there is we had previously been shipping our tailings Asia we do now have and we have secured a boutique II domestic off taker we're very happy about that because the economics are better and logistics of course are much better but we always still view that as a temporary condition you know because we are working feverishly on our own metal recovery process where we hope this year you'll hear us prove and demonstrate that we can recover silver from these materials, that will be the first objective for 2026, the announcement that we are recovering our own silver, you know, at a one ton per day pilot scale, of course, and then ultimately that we're recovering copper, that we're recovering pure silicon and silica, and then ultimately, you know, the dore of these remaining critical minerals. Couldn't be more excited about the implications of that. That means that we would then be fully integrated selling all of our materials while still staying in the category of zero waste domestically and overall. The glass is the one that I had mentioned previously and we have a bake through. I'm going to show you the equipment associated with that. And let me talk about the capital because we've been remarkably on plan here. You know, I think generally speaking when we were talking in aggregates, we would talk about 12 to 15 million dollars as the ultimate capital john mentioned 13 that's our that's our that's our real number for facility number two we spent 11 million on the facility i'm going to show you some pictures of it coming on coming together here in just a minute that is for all of the equipment to to load a panel crush a panel condition a panel sort a panel, bag it, the entire process from literally soup to nuts that allows us those three streams. We ultimately spent another $1.1 million in power generating systems. There's a pretty pervasive understanding that the grids are weak, that the grids are short. We didn't plan on being supported by the grid, and we have our own strong natural gas feed right into our facility. And quite frankly, the capital for these power generating systems was a hair higher than the upgrades that were originally planned for the facility off the grid. But the cost of the power is actually lower. So we're very happy about that. There was $2 million that's been spent. These are money spent that you're looking at. There's $2 million that was spent. on on leasehold improvements, construct metal spent that money, the landlord is responsible for that money, that money will come back, you know, from the landlord, we had a need for speed. And so we, we got all that done, the building looks incredible. That includes not just building and we sold improvements to 600 Lake Avenue, but the entirety of of the storage complex, which is the number just below it 1.1 million. And you see the pictures to the side of the fencing and the storage, which is all coming online. By the end of this month, many of you, again, will see all of that. So if you take out the leasehold improvements, we're just at about $13 million, remarkably right on plan. Like I have to say, the metals team has been exceptional in managing their capital budget and their capital spending. We are going to spend another million and a half. Half of that million has already been spent for this product upgrade. What's happened, and I'll show you a picture of it right now, what's happened is we have been engaged with some of the largest glass manufacturers in the country. You know, and we were previously talking about using this glass for recycling, you know, bottles and tiles and vases. Now we're talking about fiber optics and cements. And we're presenting our glass, which is clean of laminates, plastics, glues, and those kinds of contaminants, but still has some dust on it, still has some small shards of aluminum in it. And so we assembled this eddy system that you're looking at that magnetically removes all of the metals. They're really just small traces of remaining metals and then cleans off so that our glass meets the highest specifications of the best glass manufacturers in the country. And we're in final stages of negotiation with multiple parties. I could say, frankly, that all of the parties want all of our glass. And so we find ourselves from a supply and demand position in a very, very good place. In terms of the actual facility, this is an older picture that you've seen before with the facility cells, of course, with solar panels. That's not true anymore. The facility and the leasehold improvements have substantially all been completed. The equipment is being assembled. We took pictures as we were progressing through it just so you can get a sense of how it's laying out and how it's coming together. by the end of this month it will certainly fully be together and including the power generation and including the external scrubbing systems everything is on site and being assembled and the storage facility as you can see fully fenced um you know and um and really laid out extremely nicely now uh the road the improvements are being made to the road uh just alongside it so that we can um you know transport the materials super efficiently super expediently know from storage into the processing facility so a tremendous amount has been done with the core facility with the basic three off streams a tremendous amount has been done with upgrading some of our off take especially and certainly the glass and we've also made a tremendous amount of process on our metal recovery from from these materials we have designed this process we have finalized design of this process we have engaged our major partners, pilot testing, bench testing is being done in a distributed fashion. And as Judd said, we expect it all to come together into an integrated one ton per day solution that we would prefer to have right at the 600 Lake facility. And that was what our meeting earlier this week with our regulators was about. And I couldn't have been happier, you know, with the outcome of those discussions. I want to show you the market as well. We're making continued progress with the market. We're making progress with strategic customers. We're engaged with strategic customers both in terms of customer agreements, master service agreements, and even in some cases co-locating and joint potentially operating agreements. Those are fascinating. I think this picture that everyone has seen before shows how clearly California is Arizona and Nevada represent the oldest panels, the largest end-of-life market in the country. The next map that you're about to see was updated. This map that you're looking at is two years old. The map that you're about to see, California, Nevada, Arizona, is presented identically, but you start to see what's happening in the rest of the country. So just in the last two years, expanded deployments across the southern part of the United States up up the eastern seaboard and even into the mid-atlantic you know and northern Midwest have been remarkable so so a part of this is what's happened in the last two years quite frankly part of this is improvement of data but you can see that this is not a regional play the market is big people always ask me Well, what about, you know, new deployments? You know, the solar industry has really hit some headwinds, hasn't it? My first reaction to that comment is we care less about what's being deployed today because we're end of life. Our market is the end of life. But rest assured, look at the projects that are under development. It doesn't seem or feel like it. know the the solar industry has um has hit a wall it certainly has some headwinds politically and otherwise but um but it's a relative statement to to imagine that um there isn't wide-scale deployment happening is certainly incorrect and so we're we're stable With our projections, we feel very, very good about what this facility looks like running at 90% utilization. We feel really good about the ability to capture high yields of our silver. You know, it's really the first step in our recovery process is to start recovering our own silver over 90%. You know, and with these higher silver prices, our metal recoveries start looking just as good, if not better, than our tipping fees. So this is the thesis. This is what we're working towards. This does not include, you know, higher recoveries of our own metals. This only includes the sale of glass, the sale of aluminum, and the sale of those tailings. So I want to pivot to Sierra Springs just for a couple of updates. Just as much, if not more, has happened here than even what's happening with the metals business. I think we can assure people Judd is fully dedicated to the monetization and sale of all of our mining assets. We're in a diligence and close mode. That's very, very big news. It's very good news. We cannot share any details until the definitive agreements are done, signed, sealed, and delivered. And as Judd said, we expect that with high probability in the third quarter. The Sierra Springs opportunity, we are deploying capital to Sierra Springs. We allocated the specific capital to Sierra Springs. their board and our board have approved a path to controlling this enterprise. And the reason that we want to control this enterprise is because we were successful in securing power for this land. And I can't think of a stronger market to be selling or monetizing into. I was going to say I can't think of a better marketplace to be right now today in the world and critical minerals, but this demand for powered land is generational. It's exceptional. And we're sitting on something that with power comes high value. So it's not only that we're sitting in a very widely recognized, highly attractive area for these data centers and these businesses. and everyone that's listed here is already here. Not to mention the ones that we're talking to that want to come. It sits right in immediate proximity of all of the development that is occurring. When we used to say immediate proximity, we were saying, you know, 10 minutes up the road to Google, 12 minutes up the road to Switch, you know, 15 minutes up the road to Apple. But that immediate proximity now is right across the street from our properties so when when we committed to essentially up to 300 megawatts of power you know we put ourselves in a position with with potentially eight 900 acres of land um you know to be monetizing right alongside what Microsoft, what Tract, and what many of these other land power compute enterprises are doing. We do not want to become a land developer. We do not want to be a day's land power compute company. We want to monetize these properties at the highest value. And if there was a marginal increase, between powered land and unpowered land, which is probably true three years ago when anyone and their mother could submit to the local public utility and get power. It's not true today. It's not true today. Today, if the land is empowered, there's very little interest in the land. And if the land is powered, I mean, people are literally kicking your door down and fighting each other, you know, to get in. So we have some work to do. to perfect and secure the land. That's why we're putting capital in. By perfecting and securing the land, what I mean is, with the same dollars, we not only get control of the entity, meaning greater than 50%, but we have all of the land, the titles, the water rights, and power secured, debt free, obligation free, that we can then market to a major counterparty. When a company like Tract is quoted saying that they're spending $100 billion in this region in the next 10 years, you only have to come and visit us to see the 1,100 acre development that is underway by Tract on the Peru shelf. You only have to come visit us to see the 1,500 acre development that's underway between us and the Peru Shelf. Peru Shelf is only 12 minutes away. So in between us and them is another six minutes, you know, partway there. This is all happening right up the road. And their third development is right across the street from us. So powered land means everything. In fact, we've learned that talking about the land per acre is frankly a misnomer. What these enterprises do is talk about the land per megawatt. You need the land. You need roads. You need, you know, conventional infrastructure. We have that. Preferably, you want flat land. You know, everything that we're seeing developing around us is expending extraordinary dollars. To flatten mountains, it feels like, it seems like, it looks like. But our lands are flat. They're much more valuable in that context. And so, but you need power. Power enables everything. Power to land drives evaluation. So we're not paying per acre. We're paying per megawatt. How much are you paying per megawatt?

A lot.

A lot. Right? So these valuations are getting very, very interesting to us. So I will say in closing that the metals business will be commissioned. By the end of this month, you will see a fully connected, fully assembled plant. By June, it will be operating. By July, it will be operating continuously. So we're on track with that. Q2 operations and then ramping up. few months later than we originally hoped, but on track nonetheless to be operating in Q2, and it's a showcase. We're going to be very proud not only to show you how it operates, but we're even prouder now with the customers that are off taking all of our materials. So that's exciting. We will not trigger the purchase of equipment until we are really satisfied with everything we see on serial number one and with the flow of panels that are going through serial number one. That doesn't mean we haven't secured site two. That doesn't mean it isn't efficient and intelligent to start the permitting, but you don't have to pull the trigger on the capital until the market suggests it's the right thing to do. We will expect We very strongly expect to announce the mining transaction in the third quarter, get that wrapped up and completed. As Judd said, we're going to get cash, we're going to retain upside, we're going to reduce cost, and we're going to simplify the company dramatically. We expect news in the third quarter on Sierra Springs. Transactionally, that's not synonymous with It will be sold. We don't believe that. It will happen that quickly. But we do believe it will be positioned and we will be engaged with meaningful counterparties to that end. And as I said last time, I do expect, you know, from there, it's 100, 120 days, we should have a lot of clarity on what the monetization strategy looks like. The options, since we last spoke, are bigger, they're broader, and they're more probable. So the work there has been exceptional. For anyone that's been out since January, and there's been many of you, including our new directors, which I really appreciate taking the time to literally walk the earth, walk the plants, walk the projects. There is a strong level of excitement about what's happening. What's our end game? Our end game is to monetize mining assets, monetize Sierra Springs in the most intelligent way, you know, and enable our treasury to fund what is really turning out to be more than just a solar panel recycling business. Of course, that's what it is, but it's an industrial material business extraordinaire. So let me pause there, I think, Zach, and we can go to questions.

Thank you, Corrado. As I mentioned at the beginning of the call, We received more than 25 questions prior to the call. And I can see that we have quite a number of additional questions coming through Zoom. Prado and Judd, our first question is, what are your future plans for your mineral and mining properties?

So I think as we said there, we're selling them. So I think, you know, we were careful with our words previously. We used to say monetize and We thought there could be joint ventures. We thought there could be earnings. You know, those are behind us. We have a clear path to full sale. Now, full sale will mean we get cash, and as Judd said, meaningful. We may get some upside with equity. We most certainly will get upside. with royalties. So we feel really good about what that value looks like to us. We also feel even better about redeploying that capital into our solar recycling business.

Thank you, Corrado. The next question is on Comstock Metals. Your competitors have publicly announced more than 15 grams per panel of silver. Can Lowe confirm how much silver they are currently extracting per panel, not the theoretical maximum? Yeah, yeah.

Our competitors say a lot of things. So I think that it's very right to say, you know, 16, 17, 18 grams per panel. We're literally consistently seeing that for the majority of panels. In film panels, Zach, much less. Okay, much less in the thin film panels, much less weight in the thin film panels. We're also getting, in some cases, you know, wafers of rejected material from manufacturing clients that just have silver and silicon. So it varies, but for the substantial majority, you know, we're talking about, you know, half an ounce per panel. You know, you call it 16, 17, 18, you know, grams per panel. It's pretty steady, Eddie. Now, our objective is to recover a very, very high percentage of that number. What does that mean? Like over 90%. So today we're generating tailings, you know, silicon, silica, a lot of silver in it. We're sending those to refineries. In the future, we want to be recovering those metals. We don't want to be getting paid for 45% or 50% of the silver. We want to recover and get paid for 90-plus percent of the silver. When there's dust escaping or, let's say, residual on the glass, guess what? There's silver in that dust. So the upgrading of the glass results in the capturing of and recovery of more dust, and that means more silver. So we expect to, you know, start at a reasonably high recovery and then just continuously improve and continuously capture and continuously improve the recovery, you know, of those minerals. So I don't know. Like, you know, there's a lot of variation, you know, depending on, the types of panels. Once we start operating the machine, we'll be able to estimate the percentage that we're capturing and we'll be able to focus on Look, the pursuit is to the theoretical maximum. People might dismiss the theoretical maximum, you know, as hogwash, but if you don't know what the theoretical maximum is, you don't have anything to strive for. So, you know, we get to know what we're actually recovering and then just continue to strive. You can never reach the theoretical maximum, of course, but we strive for that. So those two numbers, what we're actually recovering versus what we ultimately recover, is what we would be reporting once we get into fuller operations. understanding this is a first-of-a-kind operation, we don't know the answer yet.

Thank you, Corrado. How much of the company's anticipated solar panel feedstock supply is already secured through long-term customer agreements? And what level of visibility does management have into future volumes?

So, we spent a lot of time talking about this, even when our new directors visited a few weeks ago. You know, it is the number one least certain item, to be clear. Okay, the number one least certain item. But saying it just like that isn't fair because we're signing master service agreements with large customers. We're working with companies that are very, very serious about how they manage their environmental liabilities. They show us that seriousness by paying us a tipping fee. They also show us that seriousness by wanting to see certificate of destructions you know, very, very quickly. And so for us, bringing the system online, you know, starts to move major amounts of material. Now, let's talk about that first low threshold that Jeb mentioned at 20%. You know, if you're talking about operating at 20% capacity, you're talking about moving 2,000 tons of material per – 2,000 tons of material per month. Okay, so we've got upwards to six plus thousand tons of material sitting there, anxious and excited to start processing once the machine gets up and running. you know, and then, you know, we feel very comfortable that the business and the customers that we have would sustain that level. That level is not exciting, okay? It's kind of like a minimum threshold that we want to sustain first and foremost. Neither is it a layup, right? Like, we need to continue to work to bring those panels in, you know, and then to grow those panels up to much, much higher utilizations, but So a couple thousand channels a month, I think certainly out of the chute for three months is just sitting there waiting to be processed. We would probably do it at that lower rate because as we're ramping up, we're debugging, we're optimizing, we're tweaking, and then we'll let the market let us grow from there. It's not – how much visibility do we have? We have, you know, three, four, five months worth of visibility, you know, but once the machine comes online, once the panels start flowing, that will increase and that will improve, you know, as we move forward. I guess the most risk-satisfying point is the utilization doesn't need to be that high. That is not in any way, shape, or form meant to suggest we don't want it to be very high.

Gerardo, how confident are you that the new equipment will run without any problems?

We feel good about all the equipment. Let me say that specifically. Each stage of our production, from the main crushing systems to the conditioning ovens to the secondary shredding and separating systems, Each one of those is using the same engineers, the same manufacturer, the same supplier that we did and operated in the demonstration facility for over two years. We're coming on to two and a quarter years now. That's good, but even better is the scale. that we're operating the machine now, you know, the 20 times scale from the demo to where we are today, is a scale that Fortunato has operated with in past lives and past companies. So even though this is the first time that this scale is being applied to solar panels, It is not the first time that this scale is being applied to other materials. And so, look, there's always bugs, there's always hiccups, but we generally are excited to get going and get operating. And we don't expect, we certainly don't see any fatal flaws, but we don't, and we do expect hiccups and bumps, but like nothing that's going to really derail, you know, our commercial process.

Thank you. Are you able to provide fiscal year guidance on revenue?

So we have not provided specific guidance. There's some people out there talking. You know, I think I want to stick with, look, we're going to be processing a couple thousand times a month to start off. Once we get two or three months, you know, under our belt, once we've got further customer channel check, once we've got further customer visits, a lot of our customers, you know, have a box to check, which is to see this machine operating, you know, I think it will have much better guidance to come out from there.

Okay, moving on to SSOF. Regarding the Silver Springs properties, how do we best think about valuation of these assets?

So this is, you know, this is where we've been talking internally about, you know, prices per square foot of land. And I can say to you that the numbers that we justify our actions are single-digit prices per square foot of land. We see the market for powered land in our immediate locality, you know, localities, you know, us and the surrounding communities that are doing this, now in double digits. So that's right there a remarkable thing that, you know, we're investing at below single-digit thresholds where we expect fully to get above double-digit, you know, thresholds in prices per square foot. But what we're hearing and learning from the market, you know, is that if you're a private company with small, you know, megawatts, I mean, if you don't have megawatts, you're not in the conversation. But if you're talking 5, 10, 15, 20 megawatts, you know, you're looking at, you know, people looking at the value of what you're delivering in the half a million to, I don't know, three quarters of a million per megawatt kind of a range. If you're into bigger scale, 100, 200, 300 megawatts, you know, God willing, you know, 900 to a gigawatt, then you're talking about a million to four million a megawatt. Those numbers are staggering, okay? So if you're talking about public entities with With that kind of leverage, you're talking about high value. And this is exactly what our expectation is starting to elevate for, you know, Sierra Springs. People say, well, my God. If that's real, then, you know, this thing's worth more than your market cap. Well, that's what we're fixing, you know, correct here with this thing. And that's why we feel we need to monetize it because other people just, you know, people have to come in and validate it. People have to come in and transact it for anybody to believe that it's real. We've got... remarkable a remarkable amount of subject matter experts now coming in to give us you know second and third opinions on this position and I can tell you the positions are very good so it's it's it's in progress I've spent more time in the last three weeks on this than I spent in the last you know 30 weeks on it and it feels very good so I Finally, things are moving. I credit some of our directors to step in and support and helping me with this. I credit Judd for stepping in and helping to support me with this. It's not a one-man show. We're moving very strong, and the partners are, you know, I want to say lining up, but I feel like they're circling the wagons. You know, it's really needing traction here. I don't want to sound super over-optimistic. It's very, very complex. It's very... detailed work. It's very diligent counterparties, but I guess rest assured that we're doing the work to the level of detail and diligence that will meet their thresholds for transacting, and we're pretty excited about that.

With land sales, where will the capital be used?

So our singular objective is to fund the growth hopefully exponential growth of our metals business. This is going to be a national evolving to an international industrial materials company. An entire supply chain is being constructed. One of the things that probably we haven't spoken about is the logistics network that the metals team is building. Our plant managers out in California, our plant managers out in Ohio, we're coordinating logistics. We're coordinating customers. We're coordinating suppliers, you know, and the supply chains are outstanding. I mean, we've got some customers. In the case of glass, not only was it pleasantly surprising that we're dealing with some of the largest glass manufacturers in the country, it was really pleasantly surprising that they have plants some cases within 30 minutes of our location you know so so glass you know class doesn't travel far when you're getting paid 20 30 40 bucks a ton for something you can't send it very far so things are falling into place here you know you know very very well so number one place back number one place is the growth of the metals business ideally ideally except for the money that we're spending to perfect the position in Sierra Springs and perfect the power going to those lands to enable those high values, except for that money, it's all metals. So, monetized mining, you know, redeploy the metals. Monetized SSOF, redeploy the metals. So, that's the ideal scenario. You know, we're not funding biolium as we speak today. You know, that's the... You know, that's the elephant in the room. We're not funding Bioline today. They have a runway to the end of this summer, you know, as they're raising their capital. I feel good about them raising their capital, but we're paying very, very close attention to that, right? It's a big investment. It's a meaningful value, and we feel good about the team doing that. But right now, we have no plans to fund anything other than metals and SSOS so that it can be monetized for metals. I hope that's clear.

Yes, it is. Thank you, Corrado. Can you provide an update on biolium and what you expect from the investment going forward?

So I just will say two very, very salient things about biolium. Number one is that the bottleneck in that industry is feedstock. The bottleneck in that industry is feedstock. It's singularly the problem of the renewable fuel industry is there's only so much soybean and vegetable oils and so much used cooking oils. The government wants 16 billion gallons in the United States of renewable diesel and fuel, and there's only 4 billion being produced because there's not enough of those fat oils and greases. Full stop. What does biolium do? It takes the most abundant woody biomass, and it converts it into the highest yielding, lowest cost, lowest CI score oils for feedstock. And it does it with a dedicated crop from HEXIS biomass. So we have not only the most lowest cost, but the most reliable feedstock source. That is a very easy pitch to make. In my opinion, the capital markets, that pitch did not exist before a few months ago because HEXIS only came online in December and it's taken them a couple of three months to fully integrate HEXIS into the solution. And now they have something that I think is completely differentiated, you know, and strong. So that, you know, that's the number one, you know, salient point, you know, about my own. The other one is they just simply need, you know, to attract the right type of right investors, you know, into that solution. So to answer your question, we would like them to, you know, get through a Series B and then go public. When they get through a Series B and then they go public, then they are a liquid investment, you know, that we have a lot of flexibility in how we monetize. Is it possible that there's an attraction to that technology, that there's attraction to that asset, and they get acquired? That's also very possible, okay? So their route right now is, you know, Series A, Series B IPO. You know, and I think they have a really good track to do that. The less dependency they need from us to do that, the happier we are because we have a global industrial supply chain that we're building for our metals business.

Thank you for that, Corrado. Can you highlight capital spending for 2026? Yes.

So I think John mentioned the $14 million was spent for the first facility that's done. Everything is in place. We're waiting for the last few oven deliveries. These ovens are massive. So, you know, and the ovens were scheduled to come last, you know, so we're constantly synchronizing those deliveries. But everything's arrived. Many of the oven components arrived. They're coming in like every other day, right? So by the end of May, you know, we not only do expect everything to be there and assembled, that money's spent. We're going to spend another million and a half for upgrading for this glass system. We spent some of that already. The rest of it's already been ordered because these big glass companies, they say, hey, once you start shipping us this glass, you better not stop, right? So we've got some really big and exciting customers now that we're going to service with these materials. We will spend $10 million towards... a one-ton-per-day fully integrated metal recovery system, formerly known as refining. One-ton-per-day metal recovery system that will start producing silver, copper, aluminum, silicon metal, and also, you know, dores of very critical minerals. I don't want to dismiss the silica and the silicon metal, because think about this, one ton per day. If you have one ton per day, and Fortunato is able to extract a pound of metal we're going to be extremely happy. If you extract a pound of metal, you still have 1,999 pounds of material. Almost all of that is silica, glass, silicon metal. If we get that to specification grades that the market's looking for, then we're selling 100% of everything. That's exactly what our thesis is. That's exactly what our marketing is. And the values that that will portend when we're recovering all the metals is, are multiples. So, you know, we're really, really looking to get that done. Of that $10 million act, some of it is the equipment, okay? But it almost always, and almost always, and I would say almost certainly in our case, manifests itself as R&D expense. Even if you've got tanks and, you know, recovery cells and washers and separators, It's going to be R&D, because once we've proven the one ton a day, that stuff will go, parts of that stuff will go into labs, you know, and then we'll start building a 25 ton per day, you know, system, which would be more akin to the demonstration facility that we've been operating for over two years, you know, for the solar recycling. And then once that's proven out in the final investment decision, is achieved, then, you know, we'd go to like a 250 ton a day, which would be an industry scale first of its kind metal recovery facility in the United States. So, to your question, $1.5 million will be spent for upgrading downstream, $10 million will be spent, we think of it as investment in a one ton per day recovery system. The GAAP accountants will call it R&D expense. You know, and then we will not pull the trigger on facility number two purchases until we're satisfied with the ramp up of facility number one. You know, originally we were thinking, you know, that could be early, like May or June, but we really feel now that the earliest it would be would be August or September. And it could be later, and we're not in a hurry, right? What we're in a hurry to do is ramp up facility number one and turn this whole damn thing profitable.

Thank you, Corrado. We're coming up on time, and I think we've covered all of the important questions. If we did not get to your question, please send it to ir at comstockinc.com, and we'll do our best to respond either directly or we'll post the response on X. For anyone who is not following us on X, our main account is at comstockinc. Please follow us. Corrado, before we wrap up, Please give us some final thoughts for the remainder of Q2, as well as overall 2026 objectives.

Yeah, I think I have, you know, we're in a great situation where I get to say that in 21 days, we're going to be speaking again. You know, and in 21 days at the annual general meeting, we've already got like 50 plus people registered. So it's going to be a great day. We're going to take a tour of the facility. You're going to see the showcase, um, Also, if you haven't registered for that, the deadline is like three days away. So please make sure you register. Otherwise, we're going to have to close that off. Logistically, we won't be able to handle it if people are still registering. If you've gotten your proceeds, you know, please vote. You know, we really would like, you know, we're locked and loaded. You know, our board, our management team, you know, our balance sheet, we're locked and loaded. It's all about execution. And so we will not only speak three weeks from now about more execution. We will show you the visuals of that showcase and that plant coming online. You know, and then, Zach, from there, it's all about the panel flow, right? The panel flow coming in and then the product sales going out, you know, like a normal real company. So we're looking forward to that. Looking forward to seeing everybody May 28th as well.

Definitely. Thank you, Corrado. That concludes Comstock's first quarter 2026 earnings call and business update. Thank you for joining us. Thanks, everyone.

Speak soon.