Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Upload 2024. This is Trevor Brucato with RB Milestone Group, Comstock's U.S.-based investor relations firm. Joining us today is the Company's Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Corrado De Gasperis and Chief Operating Officer Billy McCarthy. Today's presentation will cover multiple topics and we will open up Q&A related to each segment for management to address. If you are interested in asking a question and are logged into the Zoom app or web platform, you could submit your questions in the Q&A module. Please note this presentation is being recorded today, February 28, 2024 and will be made available on the company's website at comstock.inc following today's event; we will also be opening up the investor surveying period for Comstock's Q1 status Stakeholder Perception Analysis report.
The survey will be an email to everybody on this call and those that view the recording and will also be made available on the company's website at the top of the Investors section. The final report, including trends on Comstock's perceived strengths, weaknesses and milestones will be published shortly after the end of the quarter. Your opinions are very important to us and will help us strengthen Comstock's investor communications efforts and guide the focus of upcoming events. Please note, today's presentation may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that may be out of the control of the company and should not be construed as a recommendation or solicitation to buy or sell any security.
For Comstock's full disclaimer, please visit their website at comstock.inc. Lastly, RB Milestone is not a registered investment advisor or broker dealer. For more information on us, please visit rbmilestone.com. Now with housekeeping behind us, let's kick off Upload 2024.
Hello and welcome to Upload 2024 and our 2023 results conference call. In June of last year we hosted our first annual Upload event, Upload 2023, and your feedback was tremendous. We see this event as an opportunity to go deeper into sharing the strategies and tactics that we're using to build, manage and grow Comstock Inc. And to let you hear from more of our operating team directly. For this year, we've made a few changes to the event. First, obviously we moved up the date to coincide with the filing of our 10-K and reporting of our 2023 results. With the pace of our developments quickening, we didn't want to wait until mid year to provide this update. Second, in order to speed things up, we've shortened and simplified the program versus last year. We'll still be covering our four major business Comstock Fuels, Comstock Metals and Comstock Mining.
We're going to go deeper into how we work at Comstock and how these businesses converge through this one company working towards one goal. This will include a specific discussion about how we think about and execute on innovation throughout our system. Corrado, Trevor and I are here with you live. To keep things streamlined, we'll bring in other members of the team in prerecorded segments so you have a chance to hear from them directly. As Trevor mentioned at the beginning, we'll have topical Q and A sessions for each of our three major business segments and then a general Q and A at the end to cover anything else. Please submit your questions using the Zoom app as soon as possible. Trevor will be processing and relaying them along the way.
Thank you all again for taking the time to attend today or to watch this on the replay later. To kick off, I'm going to hand it off to Executive Chair and CEO Corrado De Gasperis for a report on the 2023 financial results updates and the 2024 outlook. Corrado, please take it away.
Thanks Billy and good morning everyone and good afternoon and welcome to Upload 2024. It'll include our full year 2023 financial results and the outlook and some business updates. I'll start with the financials and corporate updates including our strategic investments, and then I'll summarize our 2023 business results and some of our most important 2024 objectives. Financially, the fourth quarter itself was very strong with net income of $7.8 million and fourth quarter EPS of $0.07 per fully diluted share. This drove our overall full year positive net income to $10.5 million and full year fully diluted earnings per share to $0.09. Our last two quarters drove strong second half net income well over $20 million and second half earnings per share to $0.18. All very good results indeed.
We also saw our total assets increase by over 6% to over $106 million even though we sold a major asset, while total and current liabilities both decreased dramatically, the latter by more than half down to under $15 million. 2023 asset sales resulted in third quarter gains of nearly $8 million, including the sale of the manufacturing and a small portion of our Green Li-ion investment. We also recorded gains of over $14 million just from having to write up the Green Li-ion investment to nearly $20 million in value. In December, Comstock approved and converted just under $7 million of existing advances receivable from the Sierra Springs Opportunity Fund, Inc., which I'll refer to from now on as SSOF. So we converted just under $7 million of existing advance receivables from SSOF into SSOF common equity.
These are advances we've previously made over the past four years and by converting them to common equity in SSOF, we increase Comstock's overall ownership from 11.5% to well over 17%. We also had to write up the value of our original SSOF investment to a fair value, increasing the original 335,000 that we invested by almost 35x to nearly $12 million and then valuing the totality of that investment in SSOF equity to nearly $20 million as well. We believe the SSOF equity is ultimately worth much, much more, especially with what we see in recent land value indications in Silver Springs and the surrounding areas. To be clear, this value increase in Comstock's SSOF investment is in addition to Comstock's directly owned lands and water rights in Silver Springs that we are selling for about $40 million.
Just to summarize, these recent transactions established a much higher valuation for both our Green Li-ion and SSOF equity investments and it resulted in real value gains in our annual, reflected in our annual financial statements of just over $25 million. This is a great testament to the existing and increasing value of our strategic investments. They all have a role in making our commercialization activities go faster, all of them. And they are making us more money too. In December we acquired the remaining 12% interest in LiNiCo, now wholly owned for $600,000 to be paid over the course of 2024. LiNiCo is the entity that owns the $20 million Green Li-ion investment and also owned some outstanding LODE shares.
Because we captured 100% ownership of LiNiCo, we were then able to take back, reacquire and cancel, if you will, 2.6 million plus common LODE shares that were being held by LiNiCo previously. For no additional consideration, this reduced our outstanding shares. We now have 115.8 million shares outstanding, as you'll see disclosed on the cover of the recently filed Form 10-K. We've also engaged a Singapore-based investment banker for selling our Green Li-ion shares. They're the ones that helped us sell a small portion last summer and we believe will most likely occur in terms of selling the rest of those shares this year. We also continue to see very high interest in and around Silver Springs.
Last year, the Silver Springs land purchase by Microsoft is what really justified Comstock's equity investment in SSOF and the new offers and the new interest that we're seeing since Microsoft buying other data centers is why we've increased our estimate of our properties there to about $40 million. We also expect to monetize those this year. When you combine the Nevada land assets with the Green Li-ion equity investment, you're looking at potential proceeds of up to 60%. And again to be clear, that's separate from our 17% equity interest in SSOF. Lastly, from a financial perspective, let me also comment that we disclosed in our 10-K that we have total net operating and capital loss carried forwards or NOLs of over $225 million. All of these asset sales would eventually be free of any income taxes.
Overall, a very solid report and.
A very strong and beneficial financial position. Let's now look forward to this year. It's well worth repeating that Comstock as a company, you'll hear it throughout this presentation, operates systemically and that our system has a single goal that is to accelerate the commercialization of these remarkable decarbonizing hard technologies. We call them hard technologies because they're tangible, they're practical, they're deployable, they're engineered solutions. We have become a very different company and Upload 2024 is designed to provide a much more insightful communication to all of our stakeholders on what we're really doing and perhaps more importantly, how we're doing it. We solve for and deliver meaningful climate impacting solutions across industry. We have an incredible sense of urgency, yet we also approach all problems with a keen focus on sufficiency. The solutions must practically work.
Most of these solutions and the prerequisites for implementing them require lead times, require collaborations, require cooperation, if you will, for them to be enabled. That's how we think, that's what we understand. The resulting financial and natural impacts are not only high by design, but they're also extremely valuable. So our primary focus in 2024 and beyond is commercializing our differentiated technologies while continuing to push the frontier of continued innovation, development and engineering of these technologies for even greater impact. Not to tease it, but our future innovations around energy and around decarbonization will represent breakthroughs beyond what we've ever talked about up until today. That's what really excites me and hopefully all of you when we look beyond 2024.
However, for Comstock Fuels, our biorefining technologies are commercially ready today and offer extraordinary growth for us and our customers.
The renewable fuel industry's growth is constrained by feedstock and our technology unblocks that constraint. We're actively engaged in joint development and licensing agreement discussions to identify, define and enable Bioleum hub projects globally and in each case, very importantly, with industry leaders. For 2024, David and the team will execute multiple revenue-generating commercial agreements for industry-scale projects. These projects include pre-feasibilities, feasibilities, preliminary engineering, detailed engineering, commissioning, excuse me, and construction of these facilities and these hubs by our customers. We expect two or three of these agreements this year and the names that we partner with won't disappoint. Each one of these joint development projects initially results in millions of pre-construction revenues that are prelude to the construction and the licensing of these commercial production facilities.
Many of them we're still a few years off from construction, but the customers that we're talking to know the prerequisites, know the timelines, know the investments required for our solutions, strongly aligning us together. They're paying us to do this. Those facilities, and again, there should ultimately be hundreds, would each create upwards to 20 years plus of royalty revenues for us. We're also expanding our Wisconsin-based pilot system this year for fuels so we can produce broader and faster fuel samples for our customers and accelerate the EPA pathway approvals for them pre-construction. Let me move over to recycling. As Comstock Metals is commercial now, Fortunato and the team are commissioning the solar panel recycling facilities. I mean literally right now, as we speak.
From what I've seen after final inspections, we may be crushing our first panels early next week.
It's all coming fully together. We're also rapidly expanding our existing revenue generating supply commitments. This last point is probably the most, I would say gratifying, relieving, joyous for me, since the market is pushing demand almost harder than we're pulling it in. Probably harder than we're pulling it in. Just seeing these customers signing us up and quoting bigger shipments and knowing that the market is estimated to increase 10 times to at least 1 million tons a year by 2030, and from some of our analysis and by some of the additional assessments, we're seeing now, even higher. So this is exactly why we need to go faster. We need to go faster in 2024. We need to, we need to go faster in 2025, we need to go faster in 2026.
The demonstration facility by design has limited capacity.
So Fortunato and the team is already designing our next industry-scale facility and commencing its permitting and frankly starting site selections for 3 more. All to be selected within, all to be selected. With permitting getting started this year, which makes 2024 a breakout year for metals and incredibly well positioned it for 2025 and beyond for capturing the lion's share of an incredibly big and fast-growing market. Our mining and GenMat teams are now jointly developing the machine-learning-based geologic model for an expanded data and mine plan. This is facilitating a bigger, more economically exciting and feasible, if you will, mine. We are now convinced that there's also going to be post-productive uses of these properties that can be equal to or potentially even more valuable than the mine itself. And that's saying a lot.
I'll speak a little bit more about GenMat-1 and the hyperspectral imaging system and the mining integration a little bit later, but GenMat's technology is even more notable for what they've accomplished in the area of simulating and generating new materials for 2024. They'll be commercializing their solution with also industry leading, highly technical clients and also partnering with the scientific community to simulate, synthesize and publish some of the capabilities of their proprietary technology. GenMat also has plans on accessing, sorry, third party venture capital this year, capitalizing on their current leadership position and extremely robust AI capital markets. That should be remarkably exciting if not game changing. I would say for all of us. We'll get a little bit more direct insight on 2024 from all of our team leaders during the update discussions as we progress here this morning.
But 2024 is extremely well positioned and our system is accelerating. So before I turn it back to Billy, then let me just spend another minute explaining what we mean when we say system or when we say the Comstock System. Billy can better describe the how, but let me explain a little bit of the why. From our perspective and goal. Having great or even breakthrough technology obviously is necessary, but it's not sufficient. What good is the technology if you can't commercialize it? We've designed our system with only one goal again, to accelerate commercialization of these decarbonizing hard technologies. This means our system must be designed and the resources must be dedicated to that end and only that end. It requires intelligent design, of course, but then extreme focus. It's really wrong to think of us as a hodgepodge of businesses.
I mean this might sound bold, but what we built and integrated our system to both innovate and commercialize with distinct processes and disciplines for ensuring the sufficiency of both. We just look at how fast we expanded yields for fuels or deployed the kinetics for ensuring contaminant-free solar panel recycling or thank goodness, the speed at which GenMat designed, built and successfully orbited a world-class satellite and hyperspectral imager that's now being fully integrated with geophysics-based AI and then engineered, built and deployed all the supporting and technical control systems. All of that in less than a year. We don't know of anyone else has done any of those things, period, or even understands how we did them. But I can tell you guys, it's not luck. Our lines of businesses are dedicated to commercializing.
Our innovation teams are dedicated to developing new technology like Bioleum or identifying closing gaps in existing technology like RenFuel. Bringing forward the right practical ideas for development, engineering and actionable deployment. We're now moving faster than most others because we focus on the one thing that's blocking us. And then we as a group, as a team, as a system, if you will, ensures that it gets unblocked. We don't do this independently because all of these complexities have significant interdependencies. That's where things typically go wrong, because the system can only move as fast as its slowest part. So understanding and aligning everyone around this is critical. It's not easy, it's critical. And it's also why we call it systemic or constraint based management. If we weren't organized and focused that particular way, you wouldn't even know what was truly constraining you.
A great example of this is when we realized that for battery metal recycling, the market was the constraint and that no matter how well we were able to recycle them, there just isn't enough today or in the foreseeable future from our assessment. We pivoted. We didn't have a choice because we never want to be constrained by the market. It's not luck that that the markets that we're addressing are exponentially greater than our capacity. When the opposite's true, you're dead on arrival. Every day that's what we do. We focus on the biggest single factor or conflict that's preventing us from moving.
Forward on our goal.
We dedicate ourselves to it. We all dedicate ourselves to it. If it means Billy, myself and Fortunato, I don't have to solve a problem. That's what we do. If it means David and Kevin and Rahul have to solve a problem, then that's what they do. So we're constantly unblocking and you wouldn't notice or see that, but hopefully it'll just start to seem like we're doing more, faster with less. This is the why. We also try to protect our teams from non-constrained activities. This is a remarkable, if not subtle competitive advantage that our leadership teams and our management teams are focused on one goal and that we do everything in our power to protect them vigilantly from any distractions. David's out there every day slaying Goliath. Fort is out there every day slaying Goliath.
He gets up in the morning, goes to bed at night with the same focus, not distracted by other parts of the system. Frankly, many of your peers are distracted by just those types of things. Kevin slaying Goliath on the technology front and Deep. Well, I mean Deep is actually creating a new Goliath. The system is converged and now it's better synchronized and that enables speed. We measure speed. Speed is value. Billy leads the planning and operation of our system. He's our Chief Operating Officer and he'll provide better insight now on how we hope to have and hopefully that you'll have a better appreciation how we're set up to achieve these things, how we approach these things and how we actually do these things. Billy, if I could turn it back to you, please.
Thank you. Corrado. Yeah, it's certainly a common misunderstanding. I hear from some investors that we're running this series of unrelated businesses. Some even call it a strip mall. We know it's not true, but I can understand why from the outside it might seem that way sometimes. So I hope we can share some more info today that'll clear up any remaining confusion on these points. As Corrado just explained, there is intelligent design behind what we're doing and how we're doing it. Everything starts with our goal to accelerate commercialization of decarbonizing hard technologies. We're committed to pushing the boundaries of what's possible in this arena.
We're integrating frontier scientific discovery, disciplined strategic planning and systemic management practices in one system aligned to meet the demand for commercial ready energy transition solutions today and well into the future. Our goal guides every aspect of our system which begins with the Comstock platform. The platform is the core of our system. The platform provides the shared services necessary to build a business like Comstock Metals or Comstock Fuels efficiently and quickly, including marketing, accounting, finance, HR. Removing these constraints from the technical people, researchers, engineers, so they can focus on what's most important. But the platform also provides the points of control and integration necessary to maximize shareholder value. At Comstock Inc. These functions like strategic execution, corporate strategy, governance and investor relations connect all these activities inside of these businesses.
Back to our shared goal at Comstock Inc. Our platform. These functions are foundational and they're necessary towards reaching our goal. But they're not sufficient either. The Comstock commercialization process is implemented on top of the Comstock platform.
Our four-stage commercialization process is designed to move technologies from idea to monetization in the shortest possible timeline while controlling costs and controlling risks. In stage one, we innovate. This is a central function at Comstock. It works across industries, sectors and disciplines. Our team seeks to identify problems that are worth solving and then the major obstacles needing to be overcome. They develop experimental proof of concepts and they file patents protecting our intellectual properties shortly after conception. They also identify and collaborate with aligned third parties around the world to advance our technical goals. The objective of stage one is to advance new technologies to Technology Readiness Level three, building a pipeline of qualified opportunities for us to move to commercialization.
In stage two, we develop and when a technology moves to stage two, this is when we establish a dedicated team to both develop the technology and the business towards full commercialization. This is when we move the work from research labs to dedicated commercial facilities. A key feature of our process at this stage is that our R&D teams are integrated with engineers and technicians downstream to enable full stack process and equipment development all at once with the objective of advancing the technology through TRL level six, coming out of the Valley of Death that we've talked about many times before where technologies struggle to advance. In stage three, we engineer. This is when we're building larger scale engineering models and demonstration systems. It's also when we look to secure all the necessary final regulatory approvals for commercialization.
It's also when we're validating demand with potential customers and securing early adopter agreements whenever possible. In completing stage three, we must demonstrate fully integrated full system operations. This is the proof of Technology Readiness Level 7. The purpose of all of it is to get to stage four to activate. Now, very simply, activate means monetization. Monetization through one of many options we hold at the ready. In some cases, we might own and operate facilities at commercial scale. Some cases we might develop projects, offer services, technology commercial services to third parties in exchange for fees in exchange for equity participation in exchange for license and royalty fees. And finally, in certain cases, we may look to spin out or sell businesses as they mature.
In every one of these cases, we'll optimize to maximize shareholder value creation and to use the most optimal capital sources we can to do so. So I hope this sheds a little bit more light on what we're building at Comstock. It helps to clear up some confusion. This is our process. This is our system. It's really one system working towards one goal. Everything we're doing converges inside the Comstock System. Comstock Fuels, Comstock Metals, Comstock Mining all exist within this system, advancing through the commercialization process towards activation supported by and integrated with the Comstock platform. Now, anyone out here today who believes in you only need a deep understanding of our subsidiaries to understand our company is missing a really big part of the picture. These businesses are the fruits of our labor.
We're extremely excited about what they'll produce in the coming years, but we're more proud of the engine for growth that we've built over the past two and a half years. Our platform and our idea commercialization system, Fuels, Metals, GenMat and our AI-driven mining business are the first proofs of concept for the Comstock System. The first outputs the system is the future. This is only the beginning. For the rest of the time here today and with this context in mind, we're going to look more into fuels, metals and mining in more depth. Then we're going to spend time talking about our innovation process, specifically in more detail than we ever have before.
Once again, we're going to have question and answer sessions after each topic and please send in your questions through the Zoom app. Let's get started by talking about Comstock Fuels. Corrado and I recently sat down with David Winsness, President of Comstock Fuels, for a deeper dive into recent accomplishments and future outlook for Comstock Fuels. Let's t ake a look.
We made tremendous progress in 2023 at Comstock Fuels. What were the most meaningful developments for each of you though?
For me, the three most meaningful accomplishments for us in 2023 was first we confirmed that we get 100 GGE gasoline gallon equivalents for every ton of woody biomass that we process. That was a major achievement for us to do. That included our second most important milestone, which is to prove that we can convert Bioleum into fuel. That accounts for almost half of the fuel, half of that GGE number. So we confirmed that we can convert the Bioleum to fuel. That was another major milestone for 2023. And the third was we hired a third party engineering company to develop a GREET model for us. It's a unit of measure to determine the amount of CO2 that's emitted for every megajoule of power that's created.
So it's a unit of measure that Argonne National Laboratory developed and they score every industry. Corn ethanol has a model, it's a well known described inputs and outputs, but they're all different. They're all different locations, different access to corn. So their scores vary from facility to facility, but they need the model in p lace to do that.
Biodiesel, renewable diesel also have established models. We're a new process so we had to create our own carbon intensity model. So we've done that. We provided all these inputs to a third party engineering company that built us an equivalent model for our process. Our scores are outstanding. For cellulosic ethanol, we're seeing, using default settings for biomass and distances traveled, we see about a 15 in CI score, you know, compared to corn ethanol to 70. So that's a huge improvement for cellulosic. And then we see a CI score by Bioleum of about the same 15 or 16. So it validated that we have best in class carbon intensities. And that was our third huge milestone for 2023.
I agree with David, those achievements were foundational. But what I also found meaningful over the last year was the strength, quality and speed of the partnerships and alliances that we forged. When you consider the impacts of partners like RenFuel, Topsoe and Marathon, just to name a few, and the value that they've already brought, our extended system is enabling a disproportionate higher capability. We're achieving and positioning ourselves to achieve so much more through this extended network. And it's only going to grow. There's so much more coming.
David, the 100 gallons per ton yield numbers you mentioned are on a gasoline gallon equivalent basis. So this helps to facilitate comparisons to other technologies. It doesn't mean we're making gasoline. What about when we look at products we can make specifically sustainable aviation fuel? Where do we stack up there?
Yes, sustainable aviation fuel is a hot topic today and we're very fortunate that there are other parties and other technologists making great headway. You know, there are systems that are starting up in Q1 of 2024 to convert ethanol into jet fuel. So that's fantastic for us because we make a very green sugar that converts nicely into ethanol. There is a direct path for. Our sugar to go to SAF. That's very fortunate. The other great thing is Bioleum. The molecular structure of our Bioleum wants to be SAF. After we hydro treat it, it wants to be in the molecular weight, freezing point and all that. All the qualities that are needed for jet fuel we have in Bioleum. So that was very nice for us.
Once it became known that our technology was so versatile to the fuels that we could produce, especially SAF. The market interest has frankly been overwhelming. The SAF interest is global and we're engaged throughout the Americas, Europe, and now, even with Asian inquiries for deploying our solutions. And it's coming from nearly every part of the supply chain needing to produce SAF. The timing here from a market perspective has been very, very good for us.
I think one of the most attractive features of this business is that we sit in the middle of the supply chain, right? We connect old feedstock to new markets. So our customers could be forestry companies upstream, fuel producers downstream, or totally new entrants into the middle of the supply chain. It's a great opportunity. It's a large addressable market. But Corrado, what kind of challenges are we seeing selling into such a diverse market?
Yeah, I would say the biggest challenge right now, and I think it's a challenge where we want it to be, and we're having fun with it, is tailoring our solution optimally, but differently, customer by customer, the versatility of our technology and frankly the solution based nature of our offering. And enable a myriad of solutions. For example, it enables robust forestry solutions. We have forestry companies looking to extend their capabilities using their feedstocks enabled by our technologies in every financial and environmental way. It can enable pulp and paper mill solutions. It can enable renewable fuel producers who are blocked by insufficiency of feedstock, who desperately need that feedstock to grow, and even fossil fuel producers who are desperately working to diversify into renewables. So we're solving for all of them, real time.
To take that another step further, our technology stack covers a lot of ground. We impact, we create value out of the cellulose, h emicellulose and lignin, the three components that make up all biomass. So we can integrate into existing facilities, such as the pulp and paper companies that Corrado mentioned. They might have additional capacity for biomass. They might be downsizing, they might have, you know, constraints that we can work with to deliver more value out of that same infrastructure. You know, they're focused on cellulose pulp for paper uses. But for every ton of pulp or paper that they make, we can create between 50 gallons-100 gallons of fuel that they're not generating today. That's a tremendous added value to their business. Likewise, cellulosIc ethanol has never really fully launched.
Why? Because they too have only been focused on cellulose. We can unlock the other value that's in the biomass from the hemicellulose and lignin.
At year end, we announced the expansion of our collaboration with RenFuel and that's going to include this development project in Sweden for fuel production. So you know, we're expecting to see some more exciting developments coming out of the deal with RenFuel later this year. What else are you guys looking forward to in 2024? Let's start with you, David.
Yeah, for me it's expanding our existing pilot plant demonstration plant in Wausau, Wisconsin. So we've been processing biomass for 10 years in Wausau, Wisconsin. Now we're integrating the RenFuel process and hydro treating of Bioleum to finished fuel. So from that same facility we're going to not only pulp to make our three separate products, but we're also going to be able to produce ethanol, we're going to be able to produce furfural and we're going to be able to produce Bioleum and convert that Bioleum into finished fuel. So we're expanding our facility and even further we're going to apply for EPA pathway approval for that facility. It helps us when it's time to apply for each facility that we build thereafter.
So we're going to apply for an EPA approval. And another important fact is just we want to have more hours of runtime. The more that we can operate, the more, the more reliable and confident people become in our process.
Agree, like expanding our existing capability, being able to more broadly prove and demonstrate what we know we're able to do is only going to result in the pipeline of Bioleum projects growing. And frankly that growth is going to quicken throughout the year and beyond. As we look at our network of customers, partners, alliances along with this foundational capacity. We're just going to keep growing it. It's going to, it's going to seem breathtaking to some, certainly not to us.
So up on the screen here we're.
Just going to show off some of accomplishments from last year and objectives for 2024 for Comstock Fuels. You'll find all these listed in the press release we issued this morning and just wanted to put them up on the screen here. You can also find all these slides on our website at comstock.inc/ investors, you know, for us the big takeaway here is at the end of 2023, Fuels made the transition out of stage two and into stage three in our process. And in stage three we're really again focused on the demonstration technical and content commercial.
These two major objectives focused on the revamped and upgraded pilot system which will demonstrate fully integrated production at our R&D facility, as well as early adopter contracts and agreements to start development projects on multiple future commercial projects. So in this case, stage three is revenue producing. We expect it to be revenue producing and with a real focus though, on enabling high impact monetization opportunities as we move into stage four in the future. Corrado, anything else to add?
Yeah, thanks, Billy. No, just to reemphasize that the fuel team's focus is fully on enabling our customers right now with our existing solutions and the fact that we're across the supply chain. It won't repeat all the pieces, you know, but there's even quant governmental agencies pushing aviation fuel hubs. We're talking to them. There's engineering firms trying to enable new fuel solutions. They don't have the technology, we're talking to them, you know, so the real strong takeaway here is we're going to see at least 2-3 more engagements this year covering different major, and I would say global footprint, you know, as we deliver, you know, these solutions into the market now, as we get to the end of stage 3 here and start looking forward, you know, to stage 4.
So if Trevor can maybe give us some Q and A on fuels, that would be outstanding, Trevor.
Thanks, Corrado. We will now open it up to Q and A. If you do have a question again, you can submit them in the Q and A module. We will wait for the queue to develop. All right, let's kick off with this one. Can you provide an update on the status of Comstock's DOE grant for the build out of a pilot plant to produce a variety of renewable fuels in the United States? Has the grant money come in and if not, when? And when will this system be built?
Billy, do you want to take that one?
Yeah. Just to give a little background. On the project, you know, we did, we were awarded a grant from the Department of Energy, Comstock Fuels, to look at developing a particular pathway. In this case we'd be using our technologies to process a fat created from the sugar that's generated from our cellulose and then integrate that downstream into our process. The process, the project is expected to be a 2.5- to 3-year project. We're in discussions with the DOE right now and looking to kick off phase one very soon. The funds come in as a reimbursement. There's not a check that we get written. There's a process that we go through with that.
It's important to note for everybody, you know, we're doing this project with a number of partners, most notably the University of Nevada, Reno, who is actually the technical partner who will be building and conducting the piloting of this system at the University of Nevada, Reno site. A lot of the funds will flow through them as well. But we're very excited about the project, remain excited about the project, and are working closely with the Department of Energy to continue advancing it.
Thank you, Billy.
I would add, while Trevor's getting the next question, that's, you know, that's just another prong of innovation. When we applied for the grant, we were at over 80 gallons. We're now over 100 gallons. With our own efforts, our team is expanding multiple other innovation fronts in terms of higher yields and bigger breakthroughs. So it's just a very strong, powerful example of a network, be it University of Nevada, Reno, be it other universities, other research labs, the government, ourselves, RenFuel pushing the envelope continuously. The innovation capability is much broader than our footprint, than our internal footprint.
Thanks, Corrado. Gentlemen, if you can provide some light on the, you know, as we advance here from stage two into from stage three into stage four and continue to unlock value, I mean, can you pinpoint, you know, the relevancy of revenue and contracts and, you know, unlocking shareholder value? And does that mean revenues or does that mean perhaps a step earlier than that around those licensing agreements and development of the facility and the relationship with these strategic partners?
Let me just start by saying that when we secure customers, when we secure partners, however you want to think about the joint development of a Bioleum hub, we, which as I mentioned, you have two or three coming, you not only start generating revenue, you know, which I would say is like maybe the least meaningful thing, you're getting a monster industry player committing to your technology, you're getting a region committing to your technology, you're getting validation through a process that we're getting paid for. And if anybody at that point, and I understand that we're.
We're not quite to that point, but anybody at that point does some simple math on the size of the market and the potential value, you know, it is off the charts when people say, oh, you're undervalued, they're the people that appreciate the implication of that. You know, obviously we don't have enough people appreciating that. But as we secure these agreements, the math will start to add up, and I think that will be hugely impactful. Regardless of how much they're paying us, they're going to pay us but it's going to be hugely impactful.
Yeah, look, I think it's also worth adding on the fuel side, like biofuels, this business is highly regulated. So the process to get a new fuel pathway approved, you know, is not trivial. It's a several year long process. So Corrado's talking about, the customers that we're talking to today, these early adopters, they're coming in, they understand that. Right. They're coming in before that on purpose. They've done their own due diligence, they've done their own technical reviews. Right. Everyone's coming in with the expectation that that'll be a successful process, otherwise you don't pursue it. And when you compare us to other technologies out in the market, and I see there's a question in there, Trevor, asking about this.
You know, I think the one thing that's unequivocal right now that everyone's talking about, Department of Energy is talking about it, the White House is talking about it, is the notion of biomass as the carbon source for fuel production. The reason is because you can achieve the lowest feedstock cost per equivalent barrel of fuel production. Right?
Cheaper even than crude oil. Right. We're not trying to do something that's more expensive. We're trying to do something that's better and cost competitive in the long run. That's where all of our innovations are aligned and that's what we're moving towards. When we talk about 60 gallons a ton to 80 gallons a ton, to 100 gallons a ton, it's all about because we understand the theoretical maximum, we know how much carbon is in that wood and we're trying to convert all.
Of it to fuel. That's the future of the renewable fuel business. Now, our proprietary process, we go into zoom into this very, very small universe of technologies that convert woody biomass wood into fuel. No one has announced yields anywhere near what we can do because they're generally using either one or the other part of the wood, not a combined process to tackle both.
Yeah, and w aste wood today is abundant and it's renewable. Right? It's a sustainable, sufficient solution.
Just on that point, if you can just talk about a little bit of the industry metrics related to the U.S. and the lack of output right now on the renewable side.
Yeah. You know, you're burning 230 billion gallons of liquid fuel and 3 billion, I mean, a hair over 1% is alternative biofuels. Like, I mean, the market is gargantuan and the industry is barely scratched the surface. They scratch the surface with vegetable oils expenses insufficient. Right. We shatter that paradigm, right, with, as Billy said, a low-cost, abundant, sustainable solution that frankly steps right in to the existing infrastructure.
The carbon intensity score makes it that much more attractive.
Yeah, the vegetable oils were all the rage, right? 50-60 as a carbon impact score, c arbon intensity score. David just commented 15-16. It's a game changer. That means more revenue, that means better i mpact.
And look important. Just to restate. So everyone's clear, right? Bioleum is an intermediate product that refiners who use other feedstocks today to produce biofuels can replace their existing feedstock with. So this notion of the low CI score, what are those refiners want? They want the best price cost of the lowest CI score for their feedstock. That's the equation that the refiners operate with. And that's what we're producing here with Bioleum.
Billy, perhaps you can reiterate the funding mindset on these hubs. You know, initial one, moving into many fairly aggressively over, you know, next various years.
Well, look, as we mentioned in the video, right? We've got a solution here for the middle of the market, right? And we see our role much more as technology provider and partner to producers. Now that could be producers who control feedstock today who want to produce a higher value product with it. An intermediate they can sell to fuel producers. It also can be fuel producers who say, I want to go directly to this new stock source of feedstock or old source of feedstock, and convert it into a bio- intermediate that I can use in my process. We think in all these cases it's much more likely that we are the partner, we're the project developer, technology developer and helping to bring these projects to market.
This is a new space for fuel producers. This is a new space for forestry companies. They're looking for partners with expertise. That's why we're getting the traction we're getting today at this stage for development projects. Everyone's working from the same position and looking for the right partners to achieve big things. These are all going to be big projects, these hubs, refinery scale projects.
Yeah, I mean, David is like recognized leader, you know, our customers, our potential customers, our target customers. You know, they want David at the table helping solve their problem. We have the solution.
So to wrap up on this, Corrado, you mentioned earlier, you're looking for 2-3 more engagements this year. Can you just touch on that before moving on to the next segment?
Yeah, I mean, we're knee deep, we're knee deep in it with them. You know, we're, we're iterating proposals, as I said in the video, what the versatility of our solution makes it fun because it doesn't matter, you know, to Billy's point, if it's a forestry company, if it's a pulp and paper company, if it's a refiner, we have a, we have the piece of the solution that enables the whole supply chain and we have an intimacy with the whole supply chain. Now this system that's being created, this network of partners, this network of customers, becomes also self, self fulfilling.
You know, if someone has feedstock and wants to produce bio-i ntermediaries, we can, we can link it to offtake. If someone is desperate for offtake, we can link it to bio- intermediary production and feedstock. And that's what's happening like every day. I think it's real time. I think we'll have a lot of fun giving updates on this throughout 2024.
Thanks, guys. Billy, back in your court.
Yeah. Let's. Let's turn our attention now to Comstock Metals. The metals team has been working furiously as Corrado mentioned today to open up the first commercial photovoltaic panel recycling facility of ours in Northern Nevada. So Corrado and I recently sat down with Dr. Fortunato Villamagna, President of Comstock Metals, to explore his group's recent accomplishments, discuss what's coming next. Let's watch.
It's only been a year now since Fortunato joined us and we're already starting up the first demonstration facility. So Corrado, let's talk about how speed factored into the decision to focus on solar panel recycling for this first deployment.
I would certainly say speed is the single most relevant factor. Speed. Given decision making, speed of execution and the speed of our operations, or our throughput, if you will. Our Metals team recognized the solar market the fastest, and we quickly pivoted our system from batteries to photovoltaics and established the first mover advantage with the only Nevada-based zero-landfill through end-of-life solar panel solution servicing this region. We need to stay fast and we need to keep that advantage by replicating and deploying those facilities across the broader market.
Yeah, this first mover advantage is exciting and we need to capitalize on it. Fortunato, why don't you walk us through your plans to ride the front of the wave as this market grows.
Based on what we've done so far, we've developed a very deep understanding of the market and how it's segmented. We're actively working on and further developing the plans to address each of these segments. We're going to get maybe repetitive on the issue of speed is of the essence, but I can't emphasize how fundamental that is to what we're doing. Based on that, we're going to begin the site selection and permitting process for multiple facilities simultaneously.
This future opportunity is exciting. Market's growing rapidly. But I don't want to discount how meaningful completing this first facility is. I mean, this is a true production facility. So, Fortunato, let's talk about what the reception from the market has been to your early progress.
We have seen tremendous response across all segments, whether it's the utilities, whether it's the O&M groups that manage the solar fields, the consulting, engineering group, collectors, retail recyclers, the entire gamut. Our original plan was to have enough commitments from customers to be able to commission and start up the demonstration facility. At this point, we've gone well beyond that. We have commitments that take us to almost filling up that facility to the point where now we are quoting business to create a pipeline for the first industry scale facility that we're planning. That response has been beyond our expectations.
I'd like to just reiterate. I mean, we have a fully permitted facility. We're currently commissioning our plant as we speak. And we're receiving truckload after truckload of solar panels. We may just have set a record in terms of going from the idea of photovoltaics to production to revenue. Look, the execution to date, you know, it's been really remarkable.
As we look forward to 2024, you know, what are the major objectives for this year that you guys are tracking and that our investors can be looking for?
Yeah, at a high level for 2024. We are going to continuously operate that demonstration facility, produce offtake material, find customers for it, and basically build that distribution base for the offtake. We are in the process and will continue to negotiate long-term key contracts with our suppliers. We will virtually complete the permitting for the first industry-scale facility by the end of the year. That's our plan. We have begun and will continue to plan for the next three facilities b eyond that.
We know our recycling process works well, especially in eliminating contaminants. The demonstration facility will further allow the team to refine and fine-tune the fastest cycle times for the next industry-scale facility. Being methodical with this first facility is already paying off in terms of working out the kinks and designing the most efficient, effective, scaled version of that next facility. Then we're certainly looking forward to maintaining and capitalizing our first-mover advantage and accelerating it into all the regions where we see mass quantities of end-of-life panels being sourced from. We must really physically position these facilities close to where the solar panels are to advantage ourselves and capture the lion's share of this incredible market opportunity.
So as you can hear in that discussion with Fortunato, Comstock Metals is fast approaching the end of stage three and getting ready to enter stage four this year. Activation speed has certainly been a factor here. You know, the main legs of the plan here complete the commissioning, operation and demonstration at this facility. You know, we say technology readiness level seven is really six months of continuous operation at scale and that's what we're going for here. But additionally, as we covered quite a bit, growing this market, adding supply sources, finding new locations and starting to entitle those locations to get ready for growth is a big part of what we're doing this year.
It's all about positioning us for the maximum value creation opportunities as we come into stage four later this year. Corrado, what else do you want to add?
I'll just say that now that the demonstration facility is permitted and all of the components of the supply chain are established and you know, soon to be fully operating, we're seeing more supply, you know, than capacity that we permitted to store and process it. So again, 2024 is all about the speed that we can expand the system, increase the extent of our supply agreements and grow the capacity. So when we think about, and we remember that we do. I see some questions coming up about this. We do receive revenue and cash up front from these tipping fees. We've already received nearly $100,000 in panel fees and we just are now getting production started. Also, Metals has an extremely low operating expense and a very, very low relative capital expenditure.
Generally overall, at least for the time being, very, very little competition, which is what really enables us to take a commanding lead in the market. That first mover, first mover advantage and why we hustled so fast to do it that now we need to keep doing it. So we're going to deploy facilities very quickly, you know, three or four very quickly, you know, the next couple of years, couple of three years, and the storage for those sites even quicker. That allows us to start bringing in materials again, being paid up front. So this thing, it could easily be financed at the project level. It could quickly become self financing with this negative carry of cash, which is very positive.
So, Trev, I don't know if you want to pull up some questions, please, on metals.
Any questions you all may have on the metals business are welcome. Please do so. Submit them in the Q and A module. We'll kick off with a couple here that came through. Can you comment on how abundant waste panel feedstock is in the United States?
Yeah, I'll start with that. Look, we think that there was about 100,000 tons that came out of the market last year. We've seen some projections that put that number to 1 million tons in the U.S., you know, by 2030. It's interesting, though, that some of those analyses are still based on calculations and assumptions that these panels are going to last 20-25 years. We know that. Not true. They're coming out of the market now after 12, 13, 14, 15 years faster. That would argue that some of those numbers are low, you know, so we're right in the thick of it now. First pass is that the panels are coming to us quicker than we anticipated. The good news is our facility is permitted with storage.
But I'll tell you right now, we're submitting for expanded storage because it's coming faster than we even thought it was coming. So I think. I'm frankly, extremely pleased about how we're positioned. We will. We're making a market in some respects here, you know, because we're the first, you know, net zero solution for these panels. But we're also getting a sense that the market's even bigger than we first analyzed. So we're going to stay ahead of that and just move as quickly as we can.
Thank you, Corrado.
You anticipate the second quarter to be the first quarter. Comstock Metals expects initial revenues. Can you comment on deferred versus realized revenues?
Oh, yeah, that's a good question. So. The way it works is when we receive a truckload of panels, which we've received many already, when we receive a truckload of panels there, we record, you know, we debit, you know, cash or cash receivable on that invoice right up front, and we credit deferred revenue. The accounting convention will be that once we process the material and create, you know, the residuals, be it, you know, gray mass scrap, steel, aluminum or silicon, glass, those are the three sort of categories of residuals, then we would then record the revenue from the balance sheet to the P&L, if that makes sense.
A lot of questions on the economics, perhaps, you know, Billy or Corrado, can you talk about further insight on the specs and outcome here with the demonstration and leading into industry scale facility? I'm sure you know the stakeholders would appreciate at least some high level knowledge of at least some clarity on the economics moving forward.
Yeah, let's grab this question about sort of what's the cost to build the industrial scale facility and what do the economics look like? You know, we're going to be a little coy on this because we do have competition in this market and it's developing quickly. Let's say pricing is volatile. So what I will share is this, the cost to build our full scale facility, Corrado referred to as low, let's call that an eight figure number. The important point here is the payback on that conservatively, before we even start thinking about recovery, just thinking about what we're getting paid to take panels and recycle them is two years, often less in some models.
So this is a very quick turnaround, it's a relatively low CapEx. It's a very quick payback and for that to occur the economics have to be very good. Obviously. That said, I do think we're going to be somewhat opaque about this for the next probably several years as the market matures and develops. But you know, you'll start seeing the results hit the bottom line later this year.
Yeah, yeah. And once we get, you know, once we get a few months of operation, the predictability will go up, you know, even better. But I will add that the contracts that are being signed are at or better than what we were expecting. You know, so that's very good news. And if the costs come in how we planned them, it's a fraction of that. Right. So we'll be very excited about that cash generation and to Billy's point, the speed at which it returns is absolutely key and it's fast.
You say the site that you decide on for future industry scale facilities is going to be based on the relationships you establish with feedstock providers.
Yeah. So our first, maybe to clarify one point, our demonstration facility is on the same site as the first industry scale facility is expected to be. So we have a 7,000 sq ft facility wanting to move, you know, anywhere from 50 sq ft-100,000 sq ft sitting available right on the same site. So that's what's being discussed right now with the regulators for, for another series of permits. It's very convenient, it's very easy logistically for scaling up. What Fortunato is really talking about now is the next and it's incredibly well located in Northern Nevada, you know, miles from the California border.
So. So we love the first site, if you will. It's not a hub. I was going to say hub first site. The next two, three, four, will be in close proximity to other sources of solar panels. Southern Nevada is attractive. Arizona is attractive. Remember that substantial majority of our solar fields sit in the Southwest region of the United States. Not the only place in the United States, but it's certainly the biggest place in the United States. So that's kind of a near term feel for those. The closer we are to the sources of panels, the more cost competitive we will be because logistics is a relevant variable.
Today. They deliver the materials, they pay for the logistics, and then they pay us additionally to take the panels closer we are to them. The less they have to pay us. I'm sorry, less they have to pay for logistics, the more competitive we are with alternatives.
From competitive landscape. There are certainly a limited amount of players out there processing a solar panel. I think some are, you know, at 95%. 90%. Maybe you can talk about high level. What you guys envision from a usage of landfills here moving forward.
Sure. Right now that's really the only viable alternative is landfills. We, I mean, I'm not sure if I understand the question, but in other.
The competitors in the space perhaps are still required to use landfills. Comstock, I believe, if I'm not mistaken, is looking to use zero landfills.
Yeah, yeah. Some of our competitors don't have a full cycle reuse, you know, of the materials we do.
Right.
So that's why we say zero landfill. We have full size. So from an environmental perspective, we don't. There's no question in our minds that we're the best solution. That also makes us more cost efficient, even if we're not getting recovery. But to Billy's point, we're now moving forward into recovery. We expect to recover all the materials and get some residual value for that as well, you know, and so, you know, as we position ourselves this way, we should just see a shift in market share, you know, from the landfills to us. There will be some competition. There are some competitors that aren't fully recycling. You're correct. There are some competitors that recycling is just a subset of them trying to refurbish materials.
That's a different business for us. We don't see them as competitors. So it's robust.
Can you comment on storage capacity?
Yeah. So there, there. That is a constraint. So the storage capacity for fully, fully operating Universal Waste facilities has to be separate from the site. So we are. But that's the bad news. The good news is that it's very, it's relatively simple to permit those storages in and around the site with batteries. It's a little more complicated because of the volatile, combustible nature of the materials. With solar panels it's not. So you can, in a relatively short cycle, in a relatively short cycle, permit additional storage, which is what we're doing right now. Our, our nuance is that our current facility is taking solid waste, not Universal Waste, and so it's allowed to be stored right on site and that's even more convenient.
So we, I think from our perspective, we'll have the best of both worlds. We just need to move, move. Now we didn't. We expected demand and, of course, but it's higher than we thought. So we're now moving faster for storage. Maybe said differently: separately, permitting just storage sites will be faster, much faster than just permitting a processing facility.
Would you be able to describe the suppliers that you are already getting inquiries from, commercial versus residential? And are there differences in size and type of panels?
Sorry, Trevor, let me. Go ahead, Billy, sorry.
Yeah, let me take that. I think this is a good. Question, and I think everyone should hear this closely. There's really two main segments of customers for this business here, right? There's the, on one end of the spectrum, the large scale utility scale solar deployments, right? Large solar fields in the Southwest providing power to utilities. You can think about them as being in a constant state of upgrade, right? Every week they're replacing panels that have fallen below their efficiency threshold and generating waste. The second group are the solar installers and that includes residential, commercial, industrial, whatever it may be. We don't really differentiate, but the guys who are getting hired to install solar panels, and in almost every case they're tearing out old solar panels to install new ones.
This is the segment that our supply is coming from today where our agreements are getting signed. Primarily we're having early stage and mid stage conversations with the utility scale guys. But these contractors who are doing the installation, doing the replacement of panels are on a now daily basis sending us requests for bids for jobs that they're bidding, right? Where we're the sub who's going to be the disposal side of their proposal. And it's gotten to the point now after a few months of doing this that, you know, we've had to start being selective as to which of these bids we respond to because the volume is much larger than we thought coming from the whole region.
Well said.
You touched on a lot already. But is there anything in particular that you think would expedite the process on the industry scale facilities?
Wait, no, because our prerequisite was to get the demonstration scale facility permitted and up and running. We know enough about the process to start permitting industry scale facility even if we don't have the final engineering, even if we don't have the final design, certainly in Nevada, you know. So we are, we are moving forward and we're also moving forward on permitting for site, for site storages as I mentioned to you. So we don't, we don't have, there are prerequisites to finishing that work, but there are not prerequisites for starting that work. So we're tackling some of the longer lead time items right out of the chute here. Of course, we're commissioning the existing facility, hiring plant manager, you know, getting all the staff in place. It's all going extremely well.
We're going to be crushing next week, as far as I expect, you know, from what I saw yesterday, it's really great.
Gentlemen, thank you. Billy, on to you for the next segment.
Excellent. So one of the true highlights of 2023 for me was the successful launch of the GenMat-1 hyperspectral imaging satellite. This singular event has significant implications for our mining business for Comstock, but also for the broader global mining industry. Corrado and I recently sat down with Deep Prasad, the founder and CEO of GenMat, to explore the challenges he had to overcome to get here and the next steps towards realizing this opportunity. Please watch.
Deep, first off, congratulations on the successful launch of GenMat-1 in Q4 last year. What an amazing accomplishment. Let's talk about the current status of GenMat-1 and a little bit about what the roadmap looks like as you bring the system up.
Hey Billy, thanks so much for that. So on our roadmap right now for the first half of this year, we're going to spend it completely on ensuring our testing calibration of the actual camera and the Physics AI works out. So there's a number of different technological components we've innovated along the way. We've innovated on the mission control software, we've innovated in terms of the actual geophysics based AI models that will make sense of the hyperspectral data. And then we've also innovated in taking all that and combining it with our material science related technologies so that we end up establishing a very powerful and sophisticated network effect of innovations and technologies that leads to product and offerings that are unique and competitive in the market.
First half of this year is to finish laying out and connecting all the groundwork and then the next half of this year will be spent on making net new predictions that we will then go in ground truth on the Comstock Lode and these predictions we will extract from our Physics AI. That's the plan.
I'm not sure that most people truly appreciate what an extraordinary effort and accomplishment this really was. The fact that GenMat built an unprecedented empower capability and security, satellite and imager integration that also interfaces with their AI. It's truly a first of a kind systems capability, if you will, that GenMat that facilitated and successfully achieved both the technical accomplishments, the hardware, the software, and frankly the stringent regulatory requirements for such a powerful hyperspectral image requiring additional internal software, programming, cryptography, things that GenMat had to do that would have left most teams dead on arrival. The solution will be very difficult to replicate and if you consider the AI interface nearly impossible for quite a long, long time, we really don't see anyone integrating all of these technologies into one solution.
Absolutely, Corrado. In fact, just to kind of add some more color to some of the technical challenges and regulatory challenges that we had to overcome to put up this first satellite, during the process of putting a remote sensor into space, if it's pointing at Earth and you're in America, or your American company to be more exact, you have to apply for a NOAA license.
NOAA will essentially work with the other three letter agencies to figure out what requirements should go into your satellite, what licenses should be given to it, if any restrictions, and so on and so forth with use of it. It's in this process of acquiring our NOAA license that NOAA gave us a specific tiered license that mandated a specific kind of encryption on all of our subsystems. Now, this tiered, the specific tier that they applied.
They applied it because of the resolution of our satellites historically. Over the past few decades, satellites of our resolution were far larger and had far greater computational capacity as a result to implement these encryption protocols. So we had to get scrappy and figure out how do you actually implement these encryption schemes into these subsystems so that the government is satisfied. And that was a, yeah, great, very fruitful challenge worth solving because it also made our system far more robust. Our technologies as a result are safer, o ne can say.
Corrado, once Deep's got the system live, let's talk about how we're planning to optimize Comstock Mining assets using this technology.
Our mining teams are extremely focused on significantly expanding our Dayton gold and silver resources and even delivering an expanded, I'll call it breakthrough mine plan and even breakthrough in mine planning. When I say breakthrough, I mean across the spectrum, you know, breakthrough financially, environmentally, and socially. It's going to be stunning and it's going to be different than what I believe anyone has ever seen. To do this though, we not only need to think differently, we also need broader and better data. Data on topography, geology, geophysics, even the structural integrity surrounding the mine and the mine potential that GenMat-1 provides for us. But we also need geophysics-based AI and the collaboration between Comstock's technical team and GenMat's technical team to solve for all of the above.
This is how we're really going to optimize for our assets.
We're all excited about the opportunity for the Dayton Deep. Let's talk a little bit about the path for commercializing to the broader global mining industry beyond Comstock.
So when it comes to commercializing the technology and products that we're developing here beyond Comstock, the plan is to essentially onboard a couple additional customers during our trial phase as we're working with Comstock, so that we introduce more geographical diversity into the kinds of data our Physics AI has seen. The more case studies it sees, the more accurate its predictions will be across broader, more general use cases and sample studies. So the plan is that as we pilot our project and our product with the GenMat-1, combined with our Physics AI as we pilot it with our first alpha and beta customers, including Comstock, what we're going to do is also work with Comstock jointly in a separate commercialization effort where we're going to start marketing these products and services to the greater market.
We're going to scale up the production and throughput of our satellites and we're going to start funding the additional sort of new development of next generation sensors that will disrupt the field completely, and that would be the quantum sensors. So there's a number of things that would be coming up. But the most important thing for us in commercialization is ensuring that we can find strategic mining companies, but all the way from junior mining companies to the majors who are willing to adopt this new technology quickly out of both the desire for growth and out of a fear of not being obsoleted. So we're going to reach out to those individuals first and really just scale rapidly and try to capture as much of the market as fast as possible.
Yeah, I concur. I mean it's extremely exciting the conversations that Deep and I, GenMat and Comstock are having on collaborating this new business model for servicing the broader mining industry. Comstock is foundational, as Deep mentioned, you know, as the base case. Comstock and GenMat together we believe can be an industry game changer.
So we have a lot of exciting. Things coming here in the next few years. Looking specifically into 2024, you know, what are the major objectives you're looking at?
Some of the objectives that we're looking at during 2024 is testing and validating our end-to-end pipeline from capturing and downlinking data from our GenMat-1 satellite imager all the way to applying our Physics AI to that data and making predictions that we will then go and validate with Comstock as our ground truth the next half of this year. We want to spend and what we're really looking forward to is making net new predictions with our Physics AI and then ground truthing that on the Comstock as well as with any other customers that we onboard as part of our pilot program.
Yeah, I agree with Deep. We're definitely looking forward to scanning the district and incorporating the intelligence derived from those images into a new machine learning AI based model for the Dayton. This will support the establishment of the next generation mine plan, but also reclamation plans and even post productive uses for the Dayton area. We're also already in great discussions with Deep and GenMat how we can collaborate on this new business model, the future of mines if you will, for servicing the broader mining industry together. Comstock is a critical base case but Comstock and GenMat together I feel it's really an industry game changer.
So you can see there was a tremendous effort getting us to where we are today, but still this is at its early stages. We're coming out of this first innovate phase and into the develop phase. There's a lot of different pieces to this effort and we really track sort of on the macro level, but everything's going to come together. A lot to unpack in that video and certainly it'll be available to rewatch on our website. There's two main efforts here. There's proving this technology using the Dayton and developing the commercial strategy to deploy the technology. But there's also expanding the Dayton resource, developing what Corrado is calling the breakthrough mine plan for the future. And both of these are equally important efforts to us that are going on simultaneously. Corrado? Yeah.
Thanks, Billy. I won't repeat some of what I said on that flip with Deep, but I would emphasize, you know, because we've even heard it, you know, from others like, you know, what's the big deal about having hyperspectral imaging? You know, first of all, I don't want to dismiss that we believe we have one of the most powerful hyperspectral imagers, you know, in orbit. But it's not that. It's the whole integration of the system from Mission Control, the command center capability which I reviewed last weekend with Deep's operations team. The data analysis and most importantly the algorithms, the geophysics-based AI, if you will. No, nobody has that. Nobody has it period. Let alone integrated, you know, into a solution where you can service a customer.
Think of Comstock first as a customer, you know, to be able to advance their mineral exploration, their mineral discovery so much more efficiently, but then taking it beyond that, you know, into the broader market. So now I think that it's on track. It's in some ways ahead of what we thought because the integration, the complexity, the capability is more than we even originally understood there was going to be. So I would say let's move over to questions. Travis, pick out some on the mining or the GenMat side.
That's good. Please submit to the Q and A module questions on GenMat and our mining asset. We'll start off with what is GenMat's competitive landscape as it relates to our mining.
Let me start, you know, when it comes to, I think everyone appreciates this, right? How new of a frontier artificial intelligence is. And for all intents and purposes, all everyone's heard about is large language models. So we've only seen a couple of TRL 1 type papers about simulating materials to understand that GenMat- 6 moving to 7, right. With its ability to simulate materials. And it's that same AI that Deep just referred to that is now expanding from physics and chemistry and quantum mechanics into geophysics. So we don't know of anyone that has that capability. What we do know and what we're hearing from the mining industry is that they hit a brick wall insofar as it relates to new mineral discoveries. So let me knock off a couple of the questions that I can anticipate.
GenMat is using Comstock as a base case. Comstock is an epithermal gold and silver mining district. But GenMat will expand to other metals, to other minerals. And as Deep said, the more customers and the more input, just like any other AI, the more robust and expansive the solution is. But right off the bat, the power of the hyperspectral imagery is going to show them chemistries that you cannot see with the naked eye, or even most of the advanced equipment that exists today. So you can immediately provide value to a customer with information and data that they can't get otherwise.
But I think the ultimate advantage is that how do you then filter through that data? How do you then see what can't be seen? It's a lot of data. It requires a tremendous amount of horsepower that a human brain can't process. So I don't. You know, it's arrogant to say you're peerless, but we don't see the competition.
Yeah. Let me just add, like, you know, for avoidance of doubt, what we're doing in mining here is one application of GenMat's really foundational breakthrough work on the Physics AI side. It's one potential application. It's one application we're activating. We're doing it because of the robust data set we have at our fingertips that can be used today. Right. A lot of GenMat's other work requires a lot of experimental work, a lot of generation of data. You hear Deep talks about publicly on a regular basis, that the real roadblock, the constraint to AI development is high quality data, especially when it comes to Physics AI. Right. And this is an application where we have the data set.
It's a perfect match to activate what he's done so far, what they've done over the last several years, which is tremendous, and really start to highlight it in a way to our investors as well as the rest of the public, what's possible here. We have not encountered anyone else who's done the foundational work that Deep has done to now activate into the sector. Corrado points out, not the same as people saying, I have hyperspectral data and I'm going to do something in the mining industry.
Billy, to that point, I think it's accurate to say that you're not looking to be a Hyperspectral Imaging satellite operator. Correct.
Listen, it's certainly not the business model, it's not the primary focus. Right. I think, you know, Deep is prepared to do so if necessary. However, it's a means to an end. Right. Collecting, aggregating, securing, acquiring data that can go into the AI to be processed is this business. So whatever the most effective way to acquire that data is, is how this business will grow.
Yeah, let me address another question, Trevor. Is that the satellite is obviously in orbit. Right. The speed at which it orbits, you know, gives it remarkable wingspan. Right. In terms of what it can scan. The ground link has been established. The camera is functional. Like all systems are green. Okay. We have not yet started scanning. Right. We've developed the mission control, we've developed mission control software, we developed the communication protocols, and as soon as all of that is finalized and tested, then we'll start scanning. So when someone asks the question, is the satellite operational yet? Everything's operating, everything's green, but we haven't yet told it to scan the district. That'll be the next exercise.
So you talk about that you can't be precise on exactly when GenMat will initiate revenues, but that you're advancing faster than you expected and at least one commercial agreement is likely in 2024. Can you elaborate, please?
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, GenMat, I think I mentioned I use the, I keep using the term, you know, industry leading. So that's a, that's a pretty remarkable term in this space. But you know, they're, they're engaged with industry leading material companies, recognizable names for certain. They're engaged, you know, with governmental entities. Right. And they're engaged even with super technical startups. Right. Engage means conversations about commercial use of GenMat's technology. So we're certain there'll be one this year. We think there'll be multiples this year across that spectrum. And I think, you know, it's interesting, similar to fuels, we know what we can do, we can represent what we can do.
The market will be skeptical until credible third parties corroborate it. So in a, you know, in a unintentional way, you know, GenMat's sitting right where fuels is in that regard.
Once they start, you know, signing those agreements indicating those relationships, I think a lot will happen, including, you know, GenMat raising capital from, you know, the most sophisticated, you know, segment of the venture capital markets in a, let's call it an AI market that, you know, we can't imagine being more robust than it is now. So from a timing perspective, these things are very nicely falling into place. Some of the things like that, you can't plan so you don't take it as it comes. Okay. Timing is good, but it's the same for fuels. Like we're sitting in two incredibly explosive markets.
See what else we have here.
Someone was asking a question about our team, you know, the mining team, and I think we alluded to it. But our mining engineers, our mine geologists, our, our team on the ground is fully intact and fully working. You know, we're monetizing, you see, we, we did the lease last year, we're monetizing some of the northern properties, we're expanding and developing, you know, the southern properties and our, our mining professionals. It's like similar to innovation. We have a small SEAL team there, but they're working their butts off.
That might be a good segue.
I think so. Billy, passing it to you.
Excellent. So look, as we reviewed at the beginning, innovation for us is the first step in our process. Our dedicated innovation team makes up foundational components of the Comstock System. So to this end we're going to share some more with you about this in detail. Corrado and I recently sat down with Kevin Kreisler, our Chief Technology Officer who leads our innovation team, to talk about both the why and how of innovation at Comstock. Enjoy.
Corrado. We have a lot of exciting projects in the fuels, metals and mining businesses. Our innovation team has made some. Pretty significant contributions to those efforts. But that team's going even further. They're really pushing the boundaries of what's possible with decarbonizing technology. Let's talk for a minute about how we're balancing resource allocation between these current commercial projects and the future possibilities.
Yeah, I mean our strategy is really to prioritize the most meaningful, meaningful market problems when it comes to decarbonization and their constraints, but only the ones that we can solve and dedicate the best thinkers to that solution. This not only sustains our pipeline of big innovations, it keeps us two to three steps ahead in our latest developments, most of which are not yet known to the market intentionally. Our innovation team is science based, technical, yet with an eye on how to feasibly and practically solve the big problem. It's a very different skill set to our commercialization teams and probably the biggest reason. Most innovation teams fall short when commercializing or don't have big enough or sufficient enough breakthroughs.
We effectively have a SEAL team working on TRL 0 to 3. But they are fighting a very focused war on what is blocking the solution. They also have allies. Unlike many organizations, we internally pride ourselves on facing the hardest reality. It's staying objective and aspiring to get to the no as fast as possible. We search the world for ideas and our teams are proud to disprove something, even their own ideas. So we can kill the no and focus on the yes. There are way more nos in the equation than yeses. RenFuel was a yes. GenMat was a yes. It makes us so much faster and more effective.
Yeah, that's absolutely right. The, you know, commercializing hard technologies of the TRL scale from conception to mature market adoption requires iterative innovation at every level. Our TRL 6 Bioleum fuels platform has already proven to be capable of remarkable gains, remarkable throughput, extremely low carbon intensities. We have several projects underway to increase those benefits right now, ultimately in pursuit of renewable replacement for fossil crude that would, that would accelerate mobility, global mobility to net zero. While enlisting and incentivizing stakeholders throughout the mobility supply chain. We're also developing new innovations at TRL 1 to 2 with extraordinary potential for systemic mobile decarbonization outside of mobility. And finally, we're constantly managing our IP portfolio to establish and strengthen our freedom to operate in each of our businesses. In total, we're probably about a third of our time for each area.
So Kevin, as you think about that innovation side, the new projects, looking to the future, how we select those projects, how we pick the right technologies, can have a big influence on success or failure of those projects. How are you assessing all the opportunities and zeroing in to select the ones we spend our time on?
You know, no environmental gain can, should or would happen without the corresponding economic gain. So we look for, you know, where the, you know, what are the sources of emissions, what are the sources of waste, what are the sources of inefficiencies that, that if corrected, could stimulate significant profitability, significant gains in throughput for all stakeholders. So if you look at global emissions today, about 25% of our emissions are coming from mobility, 45% from energy. Steel and cement are another 15%. Water, ammonia and industrial chemicals are the final 15%. It's not a big list. And if you look at each industry, each component of each industry, at the bottom of each supply chain or at some point in the supply chain, you've got losses that are created, inefficiencies that are created.
Those points at the lowest common denominator are ultimately driven by existing design assumptions around existing flows of natural resources. You want to look at that, and you want to target that and say, what happens? What if, right? If we change from one feedstock to the next? For example, in mobility, the vast majority of the infrastructure that we need to decarbonize is already there. It's built. We simply change the feedstock from fossil fuels to a drop-in Bioleum-derived fuel that provides the economic and environmental benefits that we're going after. With that approach, we believe the net-zero world is achievable at rates that are far faster than anyone is talking about today in terms that enable historic wealth creation for our shareholders and other stakeholders.
Our selection process and approach is really not for the faint of heart. We're relentless on how we face reality, how we surface these conflicts, the obstacles and the constraints. We're constantly challenging assumptions. The scientific methodological approach that most would find exhausting, I think. And we have created a culture internally here that finds it invigorating. You know, it's how we assess ideas, projects, and frankly, partners, if they're not aligned or able to work in this manner, transparently, always facing, you know, the most difficult conflict or the biggest obstacle that moves everything forward, then we have to move on as it wouldn't sustain the rigor. So we resolve these conflicts continuously, real time, every single day, internally and with our customers, or we just stop it. If it doesn't meet our objectives, we just stop it.
This results in us achieving an incredible amount with seemingly less resources. For us, it's only going to go faster.
Well, Corrado, let's dive into that point. You know, currently we have three full-time staff on our innovation team, including Kevin. But if you look at their project portfolio, you might think we have several dozen people here. So like really, how are we doing so much with this lean team? Like talk more about this process.
Yeah, I mean, you know, Kevin can even be more specific. But I'll tell you that our planning and our thinking process is focused on our finite capacity. We actually want to be constrained by the innovation process. And although that may sound counterintuitive, it's true. If we truly understand that the rate, the speed, if you will, that we can effectively innovate is how we truly generate the most possible value for our enterprise, then we realize that we must subordinate to that process, to the innovation function, to the place that maximizes throughput from those finite resources. And always think about how we can practically elevate, expand, accelerate that precious capacity. First of all, we don't waste it on other things like finance or legal or even business development where many others can do those tasks.
Second, we're laser focused on what's needed for the big problem, for the big solution. That's really what Kevin's leading for us.
Yeah, no, absolutely. We're starting with the team, a core team of three people. But we operate, we operate. We're very lean, we're very efficient about it because of, because of our affiliations with universities and other partners that bring the additional teams and the additional infrastructure required with regard to, you know, manage a number of projects simultaneously. We're able to move very quickly through go/no-go points with that infrastructure in place. We're also using. We've anticipated the impact of artificial intelligence on ideation, experimentation, analytics and elevation of technology through milestone and their go/no-go points.
We're active in using the AI that we have access to while GenMat is developing a future tool that would only greatly, greatly add to both in terms of the rate of our innovation, the rate at which we're able to develop new ideas and how we elevate them up the TRL scale, but also the scope.
So I hope that gives you some better insight into not just how we think about innovation, but how we execute around innovation. Now, if you recall from my slides earlier, innovation is the first phase of our commercialization process and it's a central point of convergence for ideas in the Comstock System. It's critical to our continued growth. In fact, it is our growth engine. Corrado, please jump in with any final thoughts.
Yeah, no thanks, Billy. Innovation. All right. I want to just nail it home, right? Innovation is the engine, right? It's. It dictates the speed that we can commercialize and best correlate value to our shareholders. Breaking through on 100 gallons per dry ton of wood for Bioleum. Having a physics-based AI, you know, being able to process solar panels and eliminate all these contaminants to have a zero solution, right? But it has to keep going, right? The innovation team has to stay ahead of the engineering and the commercialization. We can't ever fall behind. You know, it will affect how we improve our existing systems, how we get closer to theoretical maximum of carbon in our wood to fuel. It'll allow us to have new breakthroughs for new solutions.
So you know, we have this aligned, clear thinking SEAL team, if you will. That's extended by partners, by universities, by governments, by other companies where we just have a common goal and we're working to the same end and then ultimately supercharging it, you know, with physics-based AI. I mean that, that's really, that's really the why GenMat answer to the question. That's really where we put our money, where our mouth is. Innovation is the heart and soul of the system. It's who we are and it's who we're becoming and it's ultimately who we always want to be. When you really just think about for a minute, comparatively, what GenMat has done already for less than $15 million. It's a testament to how our system plans things and executes.
So when they validate, when they go out and raise money this year and validate, you know, what other people say about their tech and what value, what dollar value they put on it, I think our credibility will go up dramatically. I think our recognition of our value will go up dramatically. So I think at this point, you know, Trevor, we can just open up to any remaining overall questions, you know, that are left over or not yet addressed.
Well, I'll first say thank you for everybody's patience. We've actually kept a strong number of participants, attendees in this presentation. So thank you all. Opening up the questions here as a whole. I'll kick off with this first one. Can you address Comstock's mindset around dilution and different strategies related to funding future growth across the system?
Yeah. Billy, you want to go, you want me to go either way?
Yeah, sure. Look, I mean, I think dilution is. A weird word, right? People use it slinging around for different reasons. You know, I hope what you saw here today, what everyone saw, is we're in growth mode. We're in growth mode across the platform. We've established the platform for growth and we're executing for growth. Every one of these projects is going to need additional capital to reach the goals we've set out for. But, you know, we're hyper focused on efficient sourcing of that capital. And, you know, the nature of these businesses being focused on specific target industries. They're set up to raise funds directly at the subsidiaries. Now, I think GenMat's a kind of edge case. It's an interesting one, but it's a good object lesson. Right.
GenMat's going to go out into the market and raise capital this year, whereas up until this point, we've been their sole source of capital. And you know, we're very focused on establishing Comstock Metals, Comstock Fuels in that same kind of position where we can start to bring strategic capital in to fund projects specifically towards outcomes we're enabling. At Comstock, we talk about bringing technology through the Valley of Death. It's called the Valley of Death because it's hard to fund in that middle stage. That's really what we're doing here. We're pushing things, we're killing the noise as quickly as possible. We're managing the risk and we're advancing the good stuff, stuff past that point so that we can attract capital at that subsidiary level for every single one of these businesses.
I think we'll see this as we talk about commercialization of metals, will be a good point, right, where you can see us doing this in real time. There's certainly a possibility that if we have abundant cash, we would fund that ourselves. We're actively looking for the opportunities in the market to fund at the project level there as well.
Corrado.
and I think that, you know, the evolution, you know, as all of, as we're moving into, you know, stage four, as we're moving, you know, into production with metals, as we're commercializing with fuels, as GenMat's commercializing this conversational change. We, we respect that the market typically is in a show me mode. So we're going to show the market, right? We're, we're, we don't change the pace at which we're commercializing for any of these reasons, right? We're going as fast as possible. And if people really compared us to, to others, you would see it's going faster. Now I understand, understand that some people expect us to be further along. We also expect to be further along. But what we're focused on sufficiency, like, we're focused on getting there best and staying there forever.
So that's how we're doing it, you know, and I agree we're allocating capital to huge opportunities and we're doing it very efficiently. I think someone used the term cash strapped. Like, I don't, I'm not cash trapped. I could, I, I could change that tomorrow. I don't have any anxiety about access to capital. Why don't we do it? Because we are sensitive to the value that's been recognized to date. We would much rather commercialize fuels, commercialize GenMat. See those things happening, see those things happening, see an appreciation of value. And then we've also, as Billy pointed out, created optionality as to where we go for the capital. Our situation is not can we get capital. Our situation is what's the smartest, most efficient way to bring it to the table.
I got to tell you guys, I look at some of the recycling competitors, I look at their balance sheets and I looked at the decisions that they've made. I, I don't know why. Right? But they position themselves to go bankrupt. That's not intelligent in our view. So, so, you know, we are sensitive to our capital in, in that regard. We are protective of our capital. It may not, I mean, some people may not think of it that way, but, but, look at what we've accomplished in fuels, metals, GenMat with how much? So, so we'll, we'll continue to strive to be more efficient. Right. But, but, but we don't see we have a clear path to the goals that we're trying to achieve.
We don't, we, we're just trying to optimize, but we don't see obstacles that are insurmountable, certainly not in capital arena.
Let me just add two more points. You know, a lot of questions come through every one of these calls on these points. Right. The first one is are we going to buy back shares if we have a realization? And you know, sure, we've said many times, if the opportunity arises and it makes sense at that time we would. But if you think about what we're doing here today and you think about the growth mode we're in, I don't think it would be prudent for us to do that. We're going to invest every dollar we have in growing these businesses and maximizing the value of these assets we have today. It's the prudent thing to do for our shareholders, for the company.
The second point is this question about institutional investor ownership. These are intrinsically linked. Institutional investors have limits on share counts outstanding. Below those limits, they don't invest. Every institutional investor has a screen that requires a certain number of shares outstanding.
Again, buying back shares would be counterproductive in that regard. You know, we're going to use every opportunity we have, every tool at our disposal to maximize this value for you, our shareholders, for this company.
As a reminder, company is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under symbol LODE. Market cap is approximately $50 million as of today. You know, taking a look at your assets to, you know, what you are looking at throughout 2024 on a monetization front related to the Green Li-ion shares and possible divestment in the real estate assets. Maybe you can just talk about that a little bit, Corrado, and even talk a little bit about the tax loss carryover.
Yeah. I would say that the asset sales are also another reason why we're trying to be more judicious. Right. You know, bridging to those things obviously will, will unblock, you know, capital for us. But it is also true that none of those investments have a declining value profile. Right. So we, we're motivated to sell those assets. I don't want to make the wrong impression like we're working very, very hard to do it. We wish it would go faster. We also watching the development and the underlying values of those assets grow remarkably, I mean, multiples. So, so we're not going to do anything that's hurtful to our shareholders in terms of those values. And, and it's the balance right there.
There's an interdependency there amongst all the sources. So. But I'm keen, I don't, you know, I don't. I feel very confident it's going to occur more so now than ever because of the advancements that were made.
I will, you know, I say something different though, just to step back for a second. We're very selective. You know, Kevin was commenting on it, Billy was commenting on it. We invested in Green Li-ion, it was a startup. We invested in GenMat. It was a startup. You know, when Fortunato showed up, we were scratching our heads at the battery metal market. We didn't understand what we saw, you know, and you know, we didn't understand some of the pricing that was going on. But more importantly, we couldn't see the demand being sufficient. Everyone believes, and I believe there's a tsunami of batteries coming out of the market. But when, like when.
Right, so when you think about what we've done, metals to production, GenMat idea to production, you know, fuels to commercial ready and agreements now happening, it's not just efficient. It's not luck either because we've been very selective, you know, so I think that, you know, I think time will alleviate this concern in a meaningful way. Right. And then you'll start to see more larger investors who will see the de-risking and will start to move in. We've also started to get interest from analysts, you know, in the energy sector. And part of this conversation is to better explain what Comstock is as an enterprise also to those analysts. Right, because this explanation, this view of the system is something that we believe we're hearing that they'd be very receptive to.
When you're talking about some of the parts, it gets confusing to people. We don't want that confusion. We're trying hard to eliminate that confusion. Confusion. A lot of capital and there's a lot of analysis around capital sources for what we are doing right now. And so we expect to see more coverage, we expect to see more banking support and we expect to see more value.
You guys should benefit from, you know, legacy scenarios. I mean, as it relates to tax loss carryover and the sale of these assets and entering into initial revenues with the, on the metal side and further growth across the system.
Yeah, the easiest job I have is reviewing our tax return. Right. We're not paying taxes. Just sign it, file it. Any other ones?
I think I'll put the ball back. In your court here, Corrado, just for some final comments on the outlook.
Yeah, well, I guess just as a high level summary and I'll be brief. Right. Regarding what's right in front of us. Solar panel recycling will grow now, seeing revenues and compelling financial profile. Rapid capacity and storage expansion, 3-4 facilities in the next 2 years-3 years. Those numbers are going to get big and we'll be able to provide more guidance later. As Billy said, we'll be protective of some of the individual variables because it's a competitive market, but you'll be able to see the big picture. You'll be able to project the big picture. It'll get exciting for fuels. We're going to see 2-3 commercial agreements this year with a global footprint, also revenues.
And then people will start to be able to predict and see what that means to our future. Those numbers are going to be very big. And then for GenMat, multiple commercial agreements with industry leaders again, third party capital, accelerating them and their leadership position into an unprecedented market. We'll also produce the next generation mine plan for Dayton. It's going to turn some heads. I know it's going to make some of our legacy investors around gold and silver very happy. We believe these achievements and our asset sales will have a meaningful impact on our valuation.
And to Billy's point, if we sold those assets to that question of buying back stock, if we achieve the things that we're saying, if we don't have a place to deploy it for exponential growth, sure, we'll do that, but I don't expect our share price will be where it is. When those things happen, we'll all be very happy. And so we appreciate everyone's interest.
We look forward to many updates coming throughout the rest of this quarter this year and our next call in April. So with that, I want to thank everybody. We did hang on to a substantial majority, almost all of the participants. So I think that means that there is an interest in what we're saying. I think that is the conclusion though of the preparation, the presentation.
Very exciting. Thank you, Corrado and Billy, and thanks to everyone for sticking in there and for joining Upload 2024. As a reminder, please keep an eye out for Comstock's brief Q1 investor survey which will help us ultimately generate the final Q1 stakeholder sentiment report that will be published shortly after the end of the quarter and posted on the website. A link to the survey will also be made accessible on the company's website in the Investors section. Today's recording, as a reminder, will also be circulated and made available on the company's website in the Investors section. ir@comstockinc.com is the email address for those that have additional questions that have not been addressed or submitted today. Again, that's ir@comstockinc.com Thanks again. That concludes Comstock's Upload 2024 presentation. We look forward to keeping you all posted on Comstock's progress throughout 2024. Thank you.