Advanced Alloys Corp, they trade on the TSXV under the ticker IBC and the OTCQB, IAALF. IBC is a leading advanced alloys manufacturer, serving a variety of industries such as defense, aerospace, automotive, telecommunications, precision manufacturing, and much more. Happy to welcome Mark Smith, the Chairman, President, and CEO. Welcome to the conference today, Mark.
Thank you, Anna, and what a great introduction. That's basically my whole spiel, so this will be very easy. Thank you again for the opportunity. You know, here's our title slide, and let me just point out that that submarine that you see there is a submarine that IBC provides either alloys, parts, or metal for. We like to make sure that the people know that we are engaged in some of the highest technology products there are in the world. We have our normal forward-looking statement slide, and now we can get into it. IBC, as Anna mentioned, we are a producer of copper and aluminum-scandium alloys and products.
We are the only company in the United States that both casts and forges copper alloy products as our primary business. We're known for our depth of technical expertise. We have three metallurgical engineers that we'll put up against just about anybody in the world. They are currently helping various end-use space application engineers. They bring parts and drafts in to talk to us about can we supply this to them or not? More times than not, we suggest that they use a different alloy, maybe consider a slightly different design for the part, that's because our folks are the best of the best.
Last but not least, we do have casting, forging, which includes hammer, press, and ring rolling, heat treating, and machining operations, all within a single facility in Franklin, Indiana. Next slide has some stock and company information on the right-hand side. You know, just to be a little bit repetitive, you know, we have some highlights over on the left-hand side. First of all, we do believe that there is a new copper super cycle coming. I'll go through some data to support that, and we believe IBC is perfectly positioned to take advantage of that situation. We have a very highly diverse customer base. I'll go through that in a little more detail. Very vertically integrated manufacturing, we talked about that a little bit on the first slide. We'll go through some more.
Very unique marketing position in that we are the only primary copper producer in the United States for several of the machining, forging, and foundry work that we do. We have our facility in Franklin, Indiana. I can't think of really too many places to do a manufacturing business that would be better than this. The state is very business-friendly. We have easy access to labor in the area, and we really enjoy doing business in Indiana. It's very centrally located for logistics, et cetera. We'll talk about the addressable markets, which are actually quite large, for these products. In terms of sales growth drivers, we've talked about the super cycle for copper coming on.
We do have an extremely fast-growing demand for copper and copper alloys in the naval defense sector. I think we realize that China is building just a few more submarines and ships than we are today for naval purposes, and the White House is putting a tremendous amount of resources into making sure that we stay ahead in those categories. We're seeing increased copper demand across the board, and again, we'll cover that with some of the supply and demand information that I'll show you in just a minute, but it's truly an awe-inspiring supply and demand graph that we'll show you. Of course, you know, 5G and 6G are also driving very good demand growth for our business. Here's just a little bit of stock information.
Again, it shows how we're trading on the OTCQB, as well as the TSXV. Here's the really highly diverse markets that we're working in, and we're making products for all of these markets, literally every day and every week. We're into defense, we're into automotive, we're into oil and gas, we're into resistance welding, we're into electronics, manufacturing, injection molding, and foundry work. This is quite a diverse market that we get to feed into. Here's just a list of some of our customers. These are certainly the names that I think people will recognize more than others, but our customer list is over 180 different companies. That is what is creating what we call our base business, which has been around and growing for about 60 years.
It's currently growing at about a 4%-6% compounded annual growth rate per year. We have an excellent foundational business, and then we'll talk about how we think we can grow this business next. In terms of growing the business, this is our growth strategy. We want to expand into production of near-net-shape copper alloy cast products. We're doing that already, and I'll show you some parts that we've actually cast already. We want to launch casting of copper-nickel and aluminum-bronze alloys, and again, in near-net-shape cast products. We'll show you a picture or two of that as well.
We want to expand our production of cast and forged parts made with aluminum-scandium alloy, I'll get into that in a little bit more detail in just a minute, but this is really a rapidly growing area and one that IBC is particularly well suited for, largely because of their technical expertise. Of course, as mentioned earlier, we want to expand our sales of materials, alloys, and parts into the US Navy. In terms of capitalizing on this new copper super cycle, the copper industry, we feel, is entering into a new multi-decade demand upcycle. With the recent addition of our near-net-shape copper alloy parts, we're already taking part in this upcycle situation.
We're seeing a very large increase in the United States naval defense build-out, which presents potentially lucrative opportunities for IBC because of our vertically integrated capabilities. Here's where we start talking about the copper super cycle. From 1999 to 2012 was the first copper super cycle. Demand global demand rose by 46.7%, largely driven by consumption in China. Prices increased by 406%, during this time, demand for IBC's value-added copper products also rose significantly. Now we start to take a look at what does this next super cycle look like? You can see here that we're looking at having a forecasted demand estimated to rise by 63% from 2024, which was last year, to 2035.
U.S. demand is now expected to be driven by U.S. consumption, not Chinese consumption. Refined copper use rising from just over 25 million tons in 2021 to nearly 49 million tons in 2035. That's almost doubling the demand for the copper materials. What does that super cycle mean to us? Well, copper, raw copper supply will be tight. We're already seeing that in many areas of the world. That will boost pricing as well as margins for our business. Markets are going to reward precision copper products, so you're not wasting expensive copper. Precision copper products will solve multiple reliability, corrosion, thermal, and conductivity challenges in mission-critical settings in particular. Again, think of the Navy.
The U.S. copper tariffs on finished and semi-finished copper goods potentially advantages us even further, because we don't have to pay those import duties. Stage 1, let's talk about the capability to cast near-net-shape parts from copper alloys. You can see the part on the right here, and I have to say, I think this is a very, very fine-looking part. The company cast this part. We can cast parts like this up to about 500 lbs each, utilizing air-set sand molds. After the vacuum induction furnace is installed, which we hope to install sometime within the next 18-24 months, IBC will be able to cast copper-nickel and other gas-sensitive alloy products, expanding the range of products that we can make using these air-set sand molds.
In terms of scandium aluminum, this has been, you know, a very interesting journey for the company. IBC has a joint development agreement with another company called NioCorp Developments Ltd., another company that I'm actually associated with. NioCorp Developments Ltd. will be mining, processing and producing scandium oxide. NioCorp has also invested into the assets and patents that allow us to take scandium oxide and convert it to aluminum-scandium master alloy. The part that NioCorp was not able to do, and where IBC steps in and fits perfectly, is IBC can take the master aluminum-scandium alloy and convert that to the actual alloy and the specifications for that alloy that customers want.
You can see here, these are the actual scandium Aluminum ingots that IBC poured, the very first pour that they had. I'm happy to report that IBC, on the very first pour that they made by producing this material to go into ingot form, that is the alloy that customers want, they hit every spec for this alloy perfectly on target. I've never seen that done before in the scandium world, and I think, again, it attests to the technical capability that the people in our company have and the experience that they bring to the table.
We're gonna have them pour some additional ingots to make sure that they can have a repetitive manufacturing process, and ultimately, we hope to have them actually do some plate and/or billet type production as well. More to come on that, but the market is growing in this area as we speak. Stage three would be the copper-nickel alloy production, and here's where we do plan to expand into the production of these copper-nickel alloys, aluminum bronzes, and other high-value alloys by adding a vacuum induction furnace for the foundry. These, we would be casting 10%-30% copper-nickel alloys in-house. You can see all of the different specs that we can meet in terms of the SAE standards, and then the ability to produce shaped castings up to 500 pounds, which we showed you pictures of earlier.
The estimated cost for this vacuum induction furnace is about $5 million, and we've already invested about $500,000 into the support infrastructure to allow that furnace, once it's purchased, to be installed. Stage 4 of our growth is just the ability to serve the naval defense. This will be a little bit longer period of time in order to achieve this stage 4 growth driver. Because we'll need to purchase the machine similar to what you see on the right-hand side of this slide, which is a radial forge. With the radial forge, we can then take the vacuum cap, copper-nickel alloys, bronze alloys that we're producing in billet or ingot form, and we can then convert those shapes of steel into the actual shapes that the Navy wants.
These would be like the tubes, and the rounds, and the bars, and the hollows. These are the actual forms that the Navy wants on the submarines. On the first step, when we get the vacuum induction furnace, we can make the material that the Navy needs. They'll have to send it out for further processing to a radial forge piece of equipment, but we do want to have that radial forge piece of equipment on our site. We have room to build an additional building for it. We've got additional property that we can take care of all that with, and we're looking forward to being able to provide that level of service to the US Navy. Estimated cost for that, for that stage four growth is about $25 million.
Here's our 5 board members. This is a group that has been together for a long time, with the exception of Chris Huskamp, who just joined our board about 4 or 5 months ago. This is a group of directors that works exceptionally well together, generally speaking, on a 100% consensus basis. Adding Chris to the board has just been tremendous. Chris brings a wealth of metallurgical knowledge, a wealth of contacts to us, and he's particularly well-suited in the defense area, opening many new doors for us that we didn't realize were possible before. Here's our management team. Terina White.
Our three technical experts are shown here, Mark Wolma, Rajiv Jain, Ken Shasteen, just an outstanding group of three people that understand their business as well, if not better, than anybody I've ever come across. Certainly, last but not least, Jim Sims, who acts as our director of external relations. With that, I'll close it out and would welcome any questions at this time. Anna, thank you.
Great, me, too. All right, Mark, well, it appears increasingly like the world is entering into a new copper super cycle, as you noted. Talk about that. What could this mean for copper alloy producers such as IBC?
Well, I think it means, number one, there is gonna be more supply, and the big question is, where does that supply come from? Because we've been living on, you know, German supplies, African supplies, South America supplies. I'm happy to report that we still have a lot of copper production in the United States, and we're building more and more copper production. I watch this very carefully, and we have a lot of new supply of copper coming on in the United States. That makes me very happy because if it's produced in the U.S., and we're buying in the U.S., we won't be subject to any tariffs, or import duties, or anything else. That allows us to take advantage of that margin, as we get to buy cheaper.
Well, talk a little bit about that, specifically the tariffs that our current.
Yeah
... administration instituted last year. What is that causing besides some market uncertainty, but how is it affecting you all?
On the front end, we were a little bit worried about it, Anna, to be quite honest, because, you know, you start imposing European Union tariffs, as an example, and one of our major suppliers for copper was out of Germany. There were duties that were being imposed upon Japanese goods as well, and we were concerned about that, 'cause that's another supplier of our copper products. Those all got to be resolved to the point where we were not impacted at all by those duties. It was really meant to be imposed on finished parts, finished goods. We buy kind of raw copper, and then we melt it, you know, make different alloys with it, make different parts with it.
As long as we were buying the raw material, none of those tariffs or import duties impacted IBC, and it was a very, very good result compared to our fear on the front end.
Good to hear.
Yes.
IBC recently demonstrated it can produce aluminum-scandium alloy.
Yes
... master alloy produced from NioCorp development, talk about the future potential with this.
This is one that gets me very, very excited. If you take a look at marketing reports on scandium, first thing you'll discover, it's one of the most opaque markets for any mineral in the world. Again, a little scary on the front end, you get to know it better and better, and you start realizing what scandium can do for aluminum. It makes the resulting alloy much lighter in weight than the aluminum by itself. Hard to believe, 'cause aluminum's pretty light. Scandium makes it lighter yet. It makes it much stronger.
If you remember, quite a few years back, there was a Aloha Airlines incident where the top portion of the plane actually just ripped off, and that's because the aluminum, which is what it was made out of, wasn't strong enough to withstand, you know, the forces that it was under. Scandium aluminum alloys will have none of that in terms of any issues at all. It creates a very nice safety factor for airlines and construction of the airplanes themselves. It's also highly corrosion resistant. Then I'll go back to the airplane world just for a minute. When you get on the airplane, and you look out the window, and you see literally millions of rivets...
holding that plane together, that's because aluminum really can't be welded easily and in a stable way. Scandium aluminum, you can weld just like you do steel. Scandium acts as a grain refiner, and you can actually make your weld on a scandium aluminum piece of metal just as strong as the scandium aluminum metal itself. It's got just multiple attributes to it. Some interesting information, if you used scandium aluminum alloys in the construction of a new airplane, that might cost about one and a half million dollars more, but just the fuel savings alone over the life cycle of that plane would result in over $40 million in NPV.
It's a very economic thing for us to do, but it increases safety, you know, increases manufacturing capabilities, all for the better of mankind. We end up with a more efficient world.
Wow! Well, I didn't realize that about the airplanes. Thank you for that. Very important for all of us-
It is.
-to travel. One last question for you. You noted that the U.S. military and commercial markets are increasingly hungry for the nickel copper alloys that are made right here in the U.S., how is IBC positioning itself to compete in that growing demand?
In a couple of different ways. One is, w e've been a supplier to the naval industry for quite some time, we've been out talking to the subcontractors and the primes about our capabilities, even though we're selling into their system. We're getting to know them, we're building those relationships. Interestingly enough, orders are coming in right now from the Navy and the subcontractors because of that relationship work that we've been doing.
Once we get the vacuum induction furnace, and we can actually produce the copper-nickel alloy, we have almost zero doubt in our minds that we're gonna have sales very quickly. It's largely because of the relationships that we've built and the reputation that we have for the exceptional quality of everything we send to the Navy in terms of either metal or parts that they need today. They're very happy with our performance. They trust us.
Perfect. Mark, give us some closing remarks, especially for our investors out there, for your industry. What do you have to say to them?
You know, I think what I'd really like to make sure everybody knows is that we have an outstanding foundational business that just continues to grow year after year, 4%-6%. Now that we've kind of restructured the company, utilizing the best businesses that we had in it, now we're able to look at these four growth strategies, we're gonna add to that 4%-6% compounded annual growth rate on our foundational business. I think that the market's gonna be surprised how fast we can get growth into this company, growth has not been a big part of our efforts prior to this. It is a big part of what we're doing now, it's largely driven by our naval and aerospace defense applications.
Wonderful. Well, fascinating conversation with you. We're so happy you're on our conference, and we would love to continue this conversation and follow along with this exciting industry you're in.
We welcome that, Anna, and thank you for the opportunity to be here today.
All right. Thank you, Mark. Everyone, thank you for watching. We'll be right back. Welcome back, everyone. We're happy to introduce U.S. Energy Corp., trades on the NASDAQ under the symbol USEG. It's a growth company focused on consolidating high-quality producing assets in the U.S., with the potential to optimize production and generate free cash flow through low-risk development, while maintaining an attractive shareholder returns program. Happy to welcome President, CEO, and Director, Ryan Smith. Nice to see you today, Ryan.
Hey, Anna. Thank you for having us. I appreciate it.
All right, the floor is yours. Call me back when you're ready for some questions.
Great. good to be back. I appreciate everybody's time today. I apologize, I had an IT issue, so I had to move this to my laptop. If it's a too close for comfort view of my face, thanks for bearing with me. Happy to talk about U.S. Energy today and everything that we have going on. We filed a new investor presentation, which I'll go through fairly quickly today. Really highlighting the aspects of our business, both what we've accomplished over the last couple of years and kind of the inflection point that we're at today, that we plan on executing throughout 2026, to really put us in a position for this thing to take off.
The case for U.S. Energy, I think it's very simple, and I'll go through a couple of granular points and kind of work my way up to where I think the investment thesis is and how it all comes together. First of all, as if you're viewing this, you're probably aware of, we have a very large asset base in the state of Montana that we've committed to developing and bringing online. What is that? What do I mean by large? By large, I mean a 50-year plus producing asset. That 50 could probably be 150 by the size of the resource base that's currently sitting in a $40 million market cap company.
A few numbers to back up that size, which for those of you who are unfamiliar with Ryder Scott, is probably the preeminent engineering firm in the world. It was very important for us to get blessed by the best. 1.3 billion cubic feet of helium, which is a massive amount, about 440 billion cubic feet of CO2 in the ground, which is almost an unfathomable amount of resource, along with an extremely large proven oil basin. All three of these pillars, fully owned, fully operated by U.S. Energy today, with extremely de minimis third-party dependencies, where we control our own destiny. The middle column is our phase one, which is what we're talking about today.