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 7, 2026. We are streaming live, and this session is being recorded. A 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, Comstock is listed on NYSE American with the ticker LODE, L-O-D-E. Joining me today are Corrado DeGaspris, 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, Judd Merrill. Judd, you may begin.
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 defined by successful balance sheet, 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 facility 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 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 sell of royalty rights associated with the prior sell 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 sheet and meaningful upside and annual cost savings we recognize revenue in the quarter from our pilot plant and defer revenue from solar panel collections and we expect 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 headcounts 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 our strong cash position. And then derivative-related impacts, while still present, were less significant than in prior year and should be low to zero going forward with substantially all of our make-hole contingencies now satisfied. Net 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 biolian 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 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 position 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 ton 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 through throughput driven revenue we expect improving unit economics as feasibility scale we expect the facility to be profitable at 20 percent utilization and the corporation as a whole at 50 percent utilization so that is our focus at the same time we remain we highly we remain highly dedicated on monetizing legacy mining and real estate assets, and also advancing the SSOF-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 the mining. we're doing it in SSOF and and it's all to support the growth of metal so let's go into metals I know that we spoke was it two or three weeks ago you know with the year-end report and I have to say that an incredible amount has occurred in the last three weeks so I was I've been actually looking forward to this update you know with with metals especially you know we we've 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 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 reutilization and of course we we want to run it full we're also working on upgrading the downstream production line we we 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 judd 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 can use the 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 a whole spectrum of uses so we're upgrading the production line we're going to be enhancing recoveries and we've shifted from frankly worrying about you know where where is all this glass 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 the values of those homes were pretty low today uh they're high and and they're speeding forces you know for those materials so that's a tremendous update maybe one of the most salient you know for for this for 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 equipment 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 to toggle that amount you've heard from us more often than not that the silver demand and the market for silver silver is strong it's driven by photovoltaics it's driven by electronics but but the deficit in the industry uh you know which which is recent reasonably nascent you know over the last half a decade it is clearly persisting China seems to have a bigger implication to that persistence uh so the outlook of course for silver which you know exceeded 80 bucks a share an ounce sorry yesterday and is hovering right about 80 an ounce today remains very strong in 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 there's it's absolutely the lowest maintenance part of our offtake stream the tailings we've been selling most of you know to a less than optimal refiners i guess the good news updating there is we had previously been shipping our tailings to asia we do now have and we have secured a boutique domestic offtaker we're very happy about that because the economics are better and the 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 a 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 was the one that i had mentioned previously and um and and we have a breakthrough 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 we would talk about 12 to 15 million dollars as the ultimate capital judd 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 in power generating systems there's um 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 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 two million that's been spent these are money spent that you're looking at there's two 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 um you know from the landlord um we we had a need for speed and so we um we we got all that done the building looks incredible that includes not just building and leasehold improvements to 600 lake avenue but the entirety of um of the storage complex which is the number just below it 1.1 million and you see the the pictures to the side of um of the fencing and then and the um storage which is all coming online by the end of this month many of you again will see all of that so if you 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 um million and a half um a half of that million has already been spent for this uh product upgrade what's happened and i'll show you a picture of it right now what's happened just give me one second here what's happened is we have been engaged with some of the largest um glass manufacturers in the country you know and where we were previously talking about using uh this glass for recycling you know bottles and tiles and vases now we're talking about fiber optics and cements and we uh we're we're we're presenting our glass which is clean of of laminates plastics glues and those tiny contaminants but still had some dust on it still had some small shards of aluminum in it and so we we assembled this eddy system that you're looking at that 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 of the best glass manufacturers in the country and we're in final stages of negotiation with multiple parties uh 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 filled 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 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 material super efficiently super expediently you 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 uptake, especially in certainly the glass. And we've also made a tremendous amount of process on our metal recovery from these materials. We have designed this process. We have finalized the 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 wanted to show you that 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 those are fascinating i think this picture that everyone has seen before shows how clearly california 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 the 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 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 um we're end of life our market is the end of life but but rest assured look at the projects that are under development um it doesn't it doesn't seem or feel like you 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 imagine that there isn't wide-scale deployment happening is certainly incorrect. And so 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 is to start recovering our own silver we want that to be over 90 you know and with these higher silver prices our metal recoveries start looking um just as good if not better than our tipping fees so um this is the thesis this is what we're working towards this does not include you know higher higher recoveries of our own metals this only includes the sale of glass the sale of aluminum and the sale of those um those tailings so i want to pivot to sierra springs just for a couple of updates um just as much if not more has happened here than um then 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 those um we're in a we're in a diligence in closed mode that's a 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 the sierra springs opportunity we are deploying capital to sierra springs we we allocated the specific capital to sierra springs their board and our board have approved a path to uh 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 and i can't think of a stronger market to be selling or monetizing into um i was i was going to say i can't think of a better market place to be right now today in the world than critical minerals but but this demand for powered land is um it's generational it's exceptional and 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 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 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 nine hundred acres of land um you know to be monetizing right alongside what microsoft what tracked you know 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 date 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 which was 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 isn't powered 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 tracked is quoted saying that they're spending a hundred billion dollars in this region in the next 10 years. You only have to come and visit us to see the 1100 acre development that is underway by tract on the Peru shelf. You only have to come visit us to see the 1500 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 part way there. This is all happening right up the road and their third development is right across the street from us so so powered land means everything in fact we've learned that talking about the land per acre is frankly a misnomer what what 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 is is expending extraordinary dollars to flatten mountains it feels like it seems like it looks like but our lands are flat doesn't they're much more valuable in that context and so but you need power power enables everything and powered land drives the valuation 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 i will i will um say in closing that um the metals business will be commissioned by the end of this month you will see a fully connected fully assembled plant by june it'll be operating by july it'll be operating continuously so we're on track with that q2 operations and then ramping up a 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 some exciting we will not we will not trigger the purchase of equipment you know until 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 to 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 and until the market you know the market suggests it's 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 jed 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 theoretically 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 I do expect you know from there with 100 120 days we should have a lot of clarity on what the monetization strategy looked like the options since we last spoke are bigger they're broader and they're more probable so uh the work there has been exceptional for anyone that's been out since january and and there's been many of you including our new directors which i really appreciate taking the time to to literally walk 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 um and and and and enable our treasury to fund what 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 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.
Corrado 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 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 um earnings you know those are those are behind us we 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 load 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 i think that um 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 thin film panels uh zach much less okay much less than the thin film panels much less weight in the thin thin film panels we're also getting in in some cases um you know wafers of rejected material for manufacturing clients that just have silver and silicon so so it varies but but but for the for the substantial majority you know we're talking about you know half an ounce per panel you know you you call it 16 17 18 you know grams per panel it's pretty steady eddie now our our objective our objective is to recover um a very very high percentage of that number what does that mean like over 90 percent so today we're we're generating tailings you know silicon silica a lot of silver in it we're sending those to a refinery you know in the future we want to be recovering those metals at we don't want to be getting paid for you know 45 or 50 of the silver we want to recover and get paid for 90 plus percent of the silver when when there's when there's dust escaping or or let's say residual on the glass guess what there's silver in the in that dust so the the upgrading of the glass results in the capturing and re in re 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 of those minerals so I don't I don't know like you know if there's a lot of variation you know depending on the types of panels once we start operating this 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 that people might dismiss the theoretical maximum you know as as hogwash but if you don't know what the theoretical maximum is you don't have anything to strive for so it'll be good to know what we're actually recovering and then just continuing to strive you can never reach the theoretical maximum of course but but but 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 corato 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 So, you know, it is the number one least certain item, to be clear. Okay, it's 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 um and so for us bringing the system online you know starts to move major amounts of material now let's talk about let's talk about that first low threshold that judd 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 you know 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 um that the business and the comp and the and the customers that we have would sustain that level that level is not exciting okay it's it's um it's it's kind of like a a minimum threshold that we want to sustain first and foremost it's it's 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 you know so so a couple thousand panels a month you know i think certainly out of the shoot for three months is just sitting there you know waiting to be processed you know we we would probably do it at that lower rate because as we're ramping up you know we're debugging we're we're we're we're optimizing we're tweaking you know and then we'll let the market you know let us grow from there um it's not it's not it's it's the you know how much visibility do we have we we have you know three four or five months worth of visibility you know but once once the machine comes online once the panels start flowing um that will increase and that will improve you know as we move forward i guess i guess the the most um 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.
Corrado, how confident are you that the new equipment will run without any problems?
We feel good about all the equipment. Let me say that pedantically specifically. Each stage of our production from from the the the main crushing systems to the conditioning ovens to the secondary shredding and separating systems each 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, and 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 tons a month to start off once we get two or three months you know under our belt once we've got a 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'll we'll 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 could say to you that the numbers that we justify our actions our 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 so that's right there a remarkable thing that you know we're investing at below single digit uh thresholds where we expect fully to get above double digit you know threshold and prices per square foot but but what we're 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 4 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 home market cap well that's what we're fixing the you know correct here with this thing and that's why we feel we need to monetize it because um 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 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 in progress. I've spent more time in the last three weeks on this than I've spent in the last, you know, 30 weeks on it, and it feels very good. So 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. know it's it's it's really um it's really gaining traction here i don't want to sound super over optimistic it's very very complex it's very um detailed work it's very diligent counterparties but but i guess rest assured that we're doing the work to the level of detail and diligence that um that will meet their threshold for transacting and we're pretty excited about that So 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. You know, 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. And 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, in some cases, within 30 minutes of our location. So glass 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 Zach 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 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 to metals monetize SSOF redeploy to metals so that's the ideal scenario you know we're we're um we're not funding biolium as we speak today you know that's the that's the um you know that's the um elephant in the room we're not funding biolium today they have a runway um to the end of the 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 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 ssof 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 so i just will say two very very salient things about Biolia. 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 fats 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 uh oils for feedstock and it does it with a dedicated crop from hexis biomass so we have not only the most uh lowest cost but the most reliable feedstock source that is a very easy pitch to make in my opinion to the capital markets that pitch did not exist before a few months ago because hexis only came online in december and it's taken 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 so so that you know that that's 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 um 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 um 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 assets and they get acquired that's also very possible okay so uh that 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 Judd 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 but the oven ovens were scheduled to to to come last you know so we're constantly synchronizing those deliveries but everything's arrived many of the oven components arrived they're all they're coming in like every every other day right so by the end of may you know not only do you 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've spent some of that already the rest of it's already been ordered because these big glass companies um they say hey once you start shipping us this glass you better not stop right so so we we've got some really big and exciting customers now that we're going to service with these materials we will spend 10 million dollars 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. It'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 are multiples so so you know we're really really looking to get that done of that 10 million dollars act some of it is the equipment okay but it almost always and 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 and and washers and separators um it's going to be r d expense because once we've proven the one ton a day that that stuff will go parts of that stuff will go into labs you know but and then we'll start building a 25 ton per day um you know system which which would be more akin to the demonstration facility that we've been operating for over two years uh you know for the solar recycling and then once that's proven out and and 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 uh facility in the United States so to your question one and a half million will be spent for upgrading downstream 10 million will be spent um we think of it as investment in a one ton per day recovery system uh the Gap accountants will call it R&D expense you know um and then um 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 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 the 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 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 so please make sure you register otherwise we're going to have to close that off uh logistically we won't be able to handle it if people are still registering if you've gotten your proxies you know please vote you know we really would like um you know we're really we're 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 like you know like a normal you know 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
