Good afternoon, and thank you for joining Comstock Inc.'s Third Quarter 2026 Results and Business outlook. I'm Zach Spencer, Comstock's Director of External Relations. Today is Wednesday, November 4, 2026. We are streaming live, and this session is being recorded. A recording will be posted shortly after we adjourn in the investor relations section of our website. Today, we filed our Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2026, and issued a press release summarizing quarter-end results. Both documents are available on our website. As a reminder, Comstock is listed on NYSE American with the ticker LODE, L-O-D-E. Joining me today are Corrado De Gasperis, Comstock's Chief Executive Officer, and Judd Merrill, Comstock's Chief Financial Officer. After their prepared remarks, we will take questions. We received more than 30 questions in advance of the call.
If you have additional questions during the call, please use the Zoom Q&A window, and we will address as many as time allows. Today's discussion will include forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially due to risks and uncertainties detailed in our SEC filings. Full risk disclosures can be found in our filings on the investor relations page and on the SEC website. Now, it is my pleasure to introduce our Chief Financial Officer, Judd Merrill. Judd, you may begin.
Thank you, Zach, and welcome, everyone. Before reviewing our third quarter financial results, I'd like to thank all of our shareholders, especially those of you who have reached out when you've had questions or concerns. We recognize the sincere frustration and concerns over the recent decline in our stock price, but we want to iterate that our fundamentals remain strong. We made substantial progress in transforming and strengthening our financial position. We began our first commercial recycling facility operations. We launched the monetization of our investment in Sierra Springs. We also swung from a net use of investing capital to a net source of investing capital with the sale of our mining assets. With hindsight, our prior capital raise was very well timed.
Not only has it delivered a strong financial position and enabled growth, but it also insulated our progress from all of this market volatility and potential distraction. Our financial priorities remain clear. Establish Comstock Metals as a profitable and growing recycling business, unlock the value of our Sierra Springs investment, and continue reducing our other capital requirements associated with our other investments. Let me talk about our financial results. We ended September with approximately $43.5 million in total cash and restricted cash. That's consisted of $39.5 million in unrestricted cash and $4 million in restricted cash. We also ended the quarter with approximately $33.3 million in working capital. Importantly, we continue to have no outstanding debt. Our stockholder equity was approximately $140.8 million at September 30, compared to $110.9 million at the beginning of the year.
These results reflect an increasingly stronger financial foundation than we had entering 2026. Also, during the third quarter, we completed the sale of our remaining legacy mining business to Mackay Precious Metals. That transaction generated $20 million in immediate cash proceeds, along with 2 million shares of Mackay stock that is currently valued at approximately $4.4 million. There is a $7 million deferred payment obligation that is due in 2027. Importantly, we permanently unloaded an $8-plus million reclamation liability from our balance sheet. We also retained real upside from royalty and certain conditional contingent considerations based on future Mackay buyout or production decisions. Importantly, we allowed us to exit the mining business, and we are now recognizing a reduction of approximately $1.5 million in annual operating cost, and really redirected our management and financial resources towards our core recycling business.
This was a complex but well-executed transaction, and it really positions us to continue monetizing non-core assets. I also wanted to mention that common shares outstanding has changed very little over the last two quarters. That is because we are not issuing shares, and we do not have any planned reason to issue shares. In fact, the board has approved the share repurchase program. The details of that plan are communicated in our press release and the 8-K that we filed today. Now moving to the next slide. Turning to our operating results, we reported approximately $367,000 in consolidated revenue during the third quarter, and that is compared with approximately $54,000 in the prior year quarter. For the first nine months of 2026, consolidated revenue was approximately $954,000. One important point I want to emphasize is the distinction between our reported revenue and our commercial recycling activity.
Our recycling customers are billed for services, but under our revenue recognition policies, a significant portion of those billings remain deferred until the related processing services are performed. As of September 30th, Comstock Metals had approximately $4.6 million in deferred recycling revenue, representing those customer billings for services that have not yet been recognized as revenue. Our reported revenue does not fully then reflect the customer activity and contracted processing obligations associated with our recycling business. Also in the third quarter, our results include a $14 million gain from the mining transaction, partially offset by operating expenses and non-cash fair value adjustments. We reported a consolidated net loss of approximately $753,000 for the quarter, and that is compared with a $12.9 million loss in the prior year period.
The gain on mining sale is obviously non-recurring, but the more important forward financial measure is our ability to grow recurring recycling revenues that convert that growth into positive Operating Cash Flow. Our low-cost platform puts turning the Metals operation profitably into something very much achievable. One of our most important accomplishments this quarter was completing the commissioning and startup of our first industry-scale Solar recycling panel facility in Silver Springs, Nevada. The near-term objective is to achieve a sustained production rate of approximately 25% of the rated capacity by the end of 2026. As we have stated before, at this level of utilization, we expect the facility to cover its operating cost. As we increase production beyond that level, we expect the facility to contribute positive Operating Cash Flow in 2027.
Our next planned industry-scale facility is in Ohio, where we see substantial demand from existing and prospective customers. We currently estimate the capital investment for that facility to be at approximately $15 million. However, we do intend to approach expansion with financial discipline. In Silver Springs during 2026, we increased our ownership in the opportunity fund to now over 48%. The carrying value of our investment is approximately $50 million. As previously announced, Sierra Springs engaged Newmark. They are a leading global commercial real estate advisory firm, and they are going to evaluate strategic development opportunities and identify potential development and operating partners for the land, water, and energy infrastructure asset. This engagement is ongoing, and we are engaged with multiple high-quality counterparties, and we believe we will have multiple options as a result of this process.
We will be providing more visibility into the timing and potential value of these potential transactions as the process continues to advance. We have also engaged and developed an excellent relationship with Great Basin. We have managed financial commitments associated with the Great Basin natural gas infrastructure arrangements, and Newmark is working diligently to support finishing that effort in the coming months. Our objective is to have these requirements supported through appropriate surety arrangements, direct Sierra Springs financing, and ultimately with our potential development partners rather than using any more of Comstock's liquidity. Let us go to the next slide. I would like to spend some time now on how we are managing our cash and our capital requirements.
Throughout the beginning of the year through June 30th, 2026, we did make substantial investments in completing our first recycling facility and developing downstream recovery technologies and increasing our Sierra Springs investments.
These were intentional investments designed to position the company for both future growth and either immediate or intermediate monetization. We have also taken meaningful steps to reduce our recurring corporate overhead. Our cash balances also generate interest income, and based on current cash levels and prevailing yields, we expect interest income to also offset a portion of our ongoing corporate expenses. We are taking similarly disciplined approach with Bioleum. Our objective is to reduce Comstock's ongoing funding exposure and transition Bioleum towards third-party investment, strategic partnerships, and other external financing sources. Based on our current operating plans, our available liquidity, our expected cash requirements, and our ability to phase discretionary growth investments, we do not currently anticipate a need to raise additional common equity capital over the next 12 months. To just emphasize that, we have no current plans to conduct any equity financing.
This assessment includes our anticipated operating requirements and the financing and collateral arrangements contemplated in our current plans, although those plans remain subject to execution and financing risk. As we look forward to 2026 and into 2027, I believe the financial story for Comstock becomes increasingly more focused on execution and measurable results. There are several milestones that we believe are particularly important. Achieving sustained operating break-even at Silver Springs, that is demonstrating our first commercial facility can operate at the utilization levels contemplated in our business model, increasing production and generating positive cash flow from recycling during 2027. Securing large and longer-term customer commitments that improve our revenue visibility and support our expansion in additional markets. Advancing the Sierra Springs monetization process toward a transaction or partnership that helps establish the market value of those assets.
Demonstrating additional revenue opportunities through Silver and other Metal recovery, and continuing to reduce corporate and non-core funding requirements while we're developing disciplined financial alternatives for our future recycling facilities. We understand that investors want to see tangible evidence of progress, not simply projections. We believe that the combination of our operating recycling business, our strategic investments, and our debt-free balance sheet really positions Comstock to create meaningful long-term shareholder value. That concludes my remarks. With that, I want to thank you, and I will now turn it over to Corrado to take a deeper dive into Metals and SSOF before we move into Q&A. Corrado?
Thanks, Judd. Thanks, Judd. Welcome, everybody, and thank you for that review. It was excellent. We've really been working extremely hard on a number of fronts, and we have the pleasure and the honor to update everybody here today. I'm going to spend a few minutes on Comstock Metals, most of it's visual, and then I'm going to spend a few minutes on Sierra Springs, most of it's visual, showing you the progress that we've made on these fronts. I think these photos go a little bit more in depth as well to the video that we opened up the call with, for those that were able to track that. It reflected a meaningful amount of our platform. I'm only going to show a couple of cartoons, and then we'll get to the heavier Metals.
But that top diagram there was the original concept Fortunato laid out, before we even built the demo facility, to actually prove out that we can take every type of panel, we could put every type of panel through, and we could come out with clean Aluminum, clean Glass, and these Silver-rich tailings. That, of course, is up and running, it's burning well, and we're tracking up to that 25%, which we'll talk a little bit more about, and then beyond. We also integrated a Glass upgrading capability that was not part of that original diagram and was not part of our original plans. And very happy to say that we didn't only meet the customer specifications for that Glass upgrading capability, but we were able to fully integrate that system into the recycling machine that you're going to see here in just a minute, and with great result.
Additionally, we didn't originally expect to move forward with metal extraction from those tailings, which is what is now depicted in a simple form at the lower part of this slide b ut for a number of strategic reasons, we accelerated the design and the testing, both at bench and pilot level, for our ability to first be able to cleanly and effectively extract Silver, as well as the residual Glass and Silica that comes with most of that mass balance, and ultimately, the amalgamation of those other Metals that are in there a nd we moved that forward about eight months. We were able to get designed and tested early parts of the year. We were able to advance that testing into pilot stage testing, and ultimately integrate a one-ton-a-day pilot that we're going to be happy to report is now able to produce Silver.
What is absolutely critical about that exercise is that we run that pilot for a number of months. We were originally hoping that we could get that up and running by the end of the year, maybe the beginning of next year, but it is running. That now allows us to get two or three months of absolutely critical data that will inform us on the returns. It will inform us on the enhanced economics that it would portend to our operation, and it would also inform us on the best, most effective way to scale that system 20, 25, 30 times the size of a one-ton-a-day pilot. This is extraordinary news that we are ahead of schedule there. I know that there was a lot of excitement about the big recycling machine coming up and running in the summer.
There was a bit of delay from the original schedule on that, but it shouldn't be missed that Glass upgrading and Metal extraction, which were not part of the original plan, are now up and running and integrated and running as well. Net-net, we feel very, very good about the pace at which we brought a first-of-a-kind system online. This was the original, not the original, this was the final conceptual design that then went to engineering and then went to procurement, and this is what the front end of the machine looks like. You see in this picture the two robotic arms that, on average, are able to feed the system at a rate of one panel less than every seven seconds, so running very, very effectively and autonomously. We also look at the center parts of the system. You can see the front ends of the ovens.
There are four massive ovens that really make up the nucleus, the core, both in terms of capacity, balance, size, and sophistication, but also in terms of our technology and where the most valuable parts of our delamination, depolymerization, and decontamination overall actually occurs. That is a better view of those ovens from a couple of different perspectives. Then the back end of the system where we are taking those clean materials from the ovens, we are sorting them, we are upgrading them, and we are cleaning them, and we are bagging them out for saleable shipment.
We are not currently shipping our tailings because what we have learned so far, and it is still preliminary, but we have learned so far from our metal extraction process is that economically, if that process will scale for us the way that we hope it will, it would be absolutely foolish to be selling those tailings to third-party refiners for a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the value. When it comes to the Glass, this is an older picture. This system is now fully integrated into the machine that you just saw in the prior picture. The raw Glass, which a lot of people profess to say is clean, if I blew that up a little bit, I think you could see it if you look closely, there is a lot of little black dots in there.
There is metal, there is dust, there is Silver residual.
When we clean the Glass, we not only have a met specification for our largest, biggest customers for those materials, but we continue to recover more of the Metals. That would include copper, that would include aluminum, and it would also include residual Silver, which over the longer term will have an impact on higher yields from trying to maximize the amount of Silver that we ultimately pull out of that panel and are able to recapture for sale. Another thing that we did that was part of the original plan, but nowhere near anticipated to the scale of where it ended up, is the storage facility. This is a bird's eye view from one of our drones that not only shows our buildings, but also our Solar material sitting there. This is an older picture. It actually has a lot of cars in the lot.
If I showed you an update of this picture, almost every square inch of that parking lot, including the front, would be filled with Solar panels. The next time you will see the picture, most of the Solar panels will be in the large triangular storage area that is the top hat. It appears as the top hat in this picture of the building. That is a facility and scale able to hold easily 25,000 tons of material. We find ourselves with high operating capacity, high storage capacity, and really the beginning of a platform that we believe will lead the nation in this business. It is a remarkable accomplishment.
What we have done from there is we have designed the second facility, and I am happy to say that in the six weeks, the five or six weeks that we have been running all four shifts, we run the operation now 24/7. There are two different day crews and there are two different night crews, so we have four shifts, but they run two 12-hour cycles each day, that we have not experienced any fatal flaws. We have not experienced any material setbacks. We certainly have experienced the customary hiccups and modifications and adjustments that you would expect in any first-of-a-kind startup. Typically, we remediate and resolve those things. Usually it takes us a few hours to solve it. Sometimes it takes us a few more hours to fix it.
Sometimes it takes a couple days to fix it, but somewhere in that range, there has been at least a half a dozen things that have come up. We were expecting things to come up. By definition, they were things that you would not have anticipated.
By definition, all of the stress testing and commissioning that we did before that validated the things that we did anticipate, but it is going very, very well. In addition to that, I think it is very important to highlight that we are now issuing Certificates of Destruction to our largest customers. This is absolutely a paramount milestone because many of our customers, including, for example, RWE, who was our largest customer in 2025, they told us that until we started issuing Certificates of Destruction, they were holding back the release of panels. Very happy to say RWE is getting Certificates of Destruction now as we speak. Illuminate USA is getting Certificates of Destruction as we speak. Waste Management is getting Certificates of Destruction as we speak.
This weekend we issued a series of Certificates of Destruction, last weekend, sorry, for companies that, customers, companies that are under NDA that we are not really allowed to say their names yet b ut the main point is, it is all happening. So, it is very rewarding, it is very validating. Now, we are ramping up the panel flow. We are issuing Certificates of Destruction. We have had a half a dozen customers tour us. We had one customer complete, or is in the final stages of completing, the audit for us, and one of their last requirements was the issuance of the Certificate of Destruction. So these abilities to prove, validate, show that we can do things that others cannot, now starting to do it more expediently, obviously, that the system is up and running, is really remarkable.
But when we said, and I would personally apologize if I created confusion myself, we said we were targeting to operate at 25%, there was a fundamental operational basis for that. It was not just an important target because it will allow us to prove out the unit economics. It was not just a rational and logical way to scale up in phases the way that our equipment is configured, especially our ovens b ut it takes a series of cycles to prove out, it takes a series of cycle to train out, it takes a series of cycles to alternate out various operating activities. And the plan all along was to go from Single-Digit operating utilizations, very, very low, to Double-Digit operating utilizations, ultimately to 25% of Double Digits, and then beyond, right?
The good news is we are on track to do that earlier than Fortunato had originally committed to us. Obviously, we all want to see it go a little faster, but we know enough, we have learned enough to see the path, it is moving forward, and to design the second facility with, and I can attest to this, the design that we came up with for facility number two is almost identical to the design of facility number one. This is very uncommon. It is very uncommon. Usually, serial one teaches you a lot of things about every aspect and scope of an operation, but certainly also sometimes, unfortunately, teaches you that the equipment design is poor. We have not had any of that.
So, we have had tweaks, we have had modifications, we have had some hiccups, but they are all very routine as far as we are concerned b ut what we did modify for the second facility is we can deploy it now with one oven instead of four, but in a way that it is infrastructured, so adding the second, adding the third, adding the fourth is not only very, very efficient, it is very expedient, right? So that you can take a capital-sensitive approach to the introduction and then scale as the market demands it. So, we like that very, very well. So, I just want to close the Metal section off by saying that a lot of objectives have been accomplished with production. Now, of course, increasing the rate that we put the panels through the machine, that is going well.
It is going to continue, and we will most certainly keep everybody updated as it progresses. Increasing the rate, that is not only simultaneously happening, but we have a big reallocation of our best resources into the market and growing the market resources to increase the panel flow in. As I said, ahead of schedule by easily two months, with the ability to prove out at a small scale, one- ton- a- day, the ability to extract Silver. I am going to just transition for a few more minutes on Sierra Springs. Similarly, a good update from our perspective. I think for those who know, we are sitting in one of the largest, if not the largest, contiguous opportunity zone in the nation, as the crow flies, some 15 miles to the California border.
When the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Park, which again, you saw in that video, as we were opening up the call, when the USA Parkway was built to connect effectively I-80 from Reno to Highway 50 right into Silver Springs, it really had a material impact on everyone's perspective in Silver Springs. This is a picture with the green highway being highlighted on the map, but showing it originally going from no road to a dirt road to now a four-lane major highway, which has changed the entire dynamic of the quadrant in Northern Nevada. The companies that are already resident in the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center, as you see here, because it is one of the safest, best climates for advanced manufacturing, for distribution, for logistics, and for powered land for data and compute, now are migrating South.
Google is only eight minutes from Silver Springs, and Tract and Microsoft, of course, are resident now in Silver Springs. It is just expanding to a point where last month, in Yerington, the Lyon County Commissioners approved master plan and zoning changes to pave the way for the Monarch 1.2 GW/1,000 acre/$15 billion data investment. You can see we are sandwiched between all of those in a remarkably well-infrastructured area. We have 2,200 acres plus of land, water rights, et cetera, excluding the 500 or 600 acres that make up the Silver Springs Airport.
Just the core center of our industrial and commercial development area is 1,000 acres, similar to the Monarch project, and has the access through pipeline right into these properties for enough natural gas to have hundreds and hundreds of megawatts of power that we have one of the first options to expand to certainly over a gigawatt or more. We are sitting in a remarkable place. It has always seemed to be very intangible to people. If you saw that video of the drone flying through the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center, it is mountainous. It is majorly not developable. The properties that are being developed now by Google, by Microsoft, by Tract, by Vantage, by Switch, they are moving ridiculous amounts of earth. I mean, almost surreal, the movement of land to establish grades and platforms for campuses for these data centers.
This is what one of our properties looks like. You are looking at about 300, right, of the 1,000-acre center. Here is a different property, here is a different property, except they are all contiguous. To say they are flat and infrastructured would be an understatement. It is really the ideal place for the next wave of development, which, of course, is already happening. Microsoft broke ground across the street. They are building their platform out as we speak. I was at a meeting last night, two nights ago, I am sorry, on Monday, Tract laid out their plans to Silver Springs for a massive natural gas, compressed natural gas conversion station to start feeding their centers. The local largest construction company just got approval for expanded aggregate and quarry work to start feeding all this development right in everything I mentioned two minutes ago, Silver Springs.
That is a more tangible view of it. I know many of you have visited. I know the ones that have visited remarked that they hardly had ever seen any of this type of industrial development, and certainly was not aware that it was happening here in Northern Nevada, but it is. I will just close the prepared remarks by saying it is not just land. Dry land does not have a lot of value. If you have water rights, if you have access to power infrastructure, and if you have fiber, if you are looking at this map and you are seeing the blue lines, that is Silver Springs. We literally are as close as you can be to a Tier 1 latency infrastructure site outside of being in Silicon Valley. You just cannot replicate this infrastructure, and we have it all in place.
This is why Newmark saw a Tier 1 opportunity to partner with us, help us facilitate the marketing and monetization of these assets. The process is going very, very well. It is fully engaged at this point. As Judd mentioned, we will be giving you more updates on that as we progress forward. Those are my prepared remarks. I am very fine, Zach, if you want to go to questions.
Thank you, Corrado. As I mentioned at the beginning of the call, we received more than 30 questions prior to the call. I can see we have a number of additional questions coming through Zoom. Corrado, our first question is, ''Now that Silver Springs has transitioned to continuous operations, how is the facility performing, and what are the next milestones as you increase production toward commercial scale?''
I am glad I did not go into too much of this detail with those overview pictures, so hopefully this will just be very complementary. There might be a little redundancy, but I think that is probably okay if those are the questions. Really, the team and the facility have been operating daily since late September. I mean, all of our activities are coordinated towards this really, hopefully it is coming across as this controlled ramp-up of our initial 25%. That actually represents about 2,000 tons per month of processing material. The ramp rate is important for us to ensure that it is safe, that it is stable. Stable meaning the equipment is working interdependently, the equipment is working reliably, and then we are able to reliably increase that, right, while we know that these newly developed parameters and these newly developed procedures are safe and accommodated.
Really, as I said, the ramp-up has progressed over the last five, six weeks as expected. Of course, we did have some glitches. I could be a little more specific, right? We had a situation where the water pressure for the scrubber was too low, and we engaged the local water company. They have a remediation plan. They can get us more pressure b ut in the meantime, we choked the pipe, we choked it, and we were able to increase the pressure sufficiently for the level that we are operating to handle the issue. We had modulating oven temperatures, right? The controls over the oven temperatures in one of the instances went out of control. We melted some Aluminum. It was very frustrating. We fixed the regulator. Haven't had a problem since.
Right now, with a certain mix of panels coming through, one of the conveyors was producing an unbalanced mix of materials that was just representative of some of the panels that were just extraordinarily high in glass content. In that case, we are probably going to swap out the conveyor component for another one, but it can run in the meantime, and it hasn't stopped us. I am giving you these examples hopefully to make you feel like this ramp-up is going well, right? We don't consider any of those items material. Certainly, it is frustrating. Certainly, you would prefer that they didn't happen b ut when our engineering teams and operators evaluate them, it is usually pretty fast to find the solution and remediate them. Obviously, if there were fatal flaws or deeper problems, that wouldn't be the case, right? We are operating now as we speak.
In all cases, those things were timely and effectively remediated. I normally wouldn't provide all this color and all this insight, but there just seemed to be this just high sense of fear, and I guess it is understandable too. We were certainly planning to have this machine up and running earlier, so that part of it is on us. Even though we got the Glass integrated sooner and we got the Metal extraction up and running sooner, we did want this machine to be up sooner. So that is on us. I can understand how people would think, if there is some delays or it is not coming online as fast as we even said we thought it was going to, that maybe there is something very, very wrong. There is nothing very, very wrong.
So, what I wanted to say too is when we get to the 25, we're going to purposely pause at that 25, and we want to operate at that 25 for a few months. Two to three months would be outstanding, because at two to three months, we have industry-scale validation, not only of the process, its efficacy, its safety, and its reliability, but of the unit economics. One thing that's probably very important to clarify is that, once we're at that level, once we're purposely operating at a 25% capacity and we've proven all the points that I just made, there won't be anything other than us and the rate at which the panels are coming in that would prevent us from operating at any operating capacity. So, there's no, "Okay, we wanted to run it two to three months at 25%.
Let's run it two to three months for 50%." No, we'll then synchronize our production with the rate that panels are coming in, and we'll be doing almost everything in our power to increase that rate over time. I think now people, certainly from the conversations we've had with some of you, appreciate that the plant design is truly unprecedented. Our chemical and engineering teams designed and oversaw the building of something here that's truly first of its kind. We continue to work intimately with our equipment partners. We got somebody out of bed last week just because of a ball bearing issue, and it didn't impact our capacity, because we have redundancy b ut it was remarkable to see how fast they took that on and debugged it and fixed it. Clean materials are definitely being processed now for all three of our product streams.
We're producing clean Aluminum, we're producing clean Glass, and we're producing these Metal-rich tailings. As I mentioned, we're issuing Certificates of Destruction to our major customers. We've hosted site tours. And this line, we have not seen or learned anything that would suggest that it can't run up to its 100,000 tons of annual capacity a nd it's a very key point here. We're the only company that we know that has the ability at scale to ethically, truthfully, completely eliminate these environmental liabilities for our customers, certify it, validate it, and avoid any materials going into landfills. The funny marketing of our competition is they keep talking about landfill avoidance, which as we debug it and audit and check it out, it usually means they're sending it somewhere else to do something before it goes to a landfill.
One of our efforts here is to educate the market that that's not zero landfill, and that's not environmentally eliminating or terminating anybody's liability. So buyer beware if people can't prove to you that it's truly destroyed.
Corrado, ''You mentioned utilization of at least 25%, which implies turning on a second Oven. Could you provide some insight on how you will determine when additional Ovens will be turned on, and how do you balance that with feedstock?''
Well, first of all, we have now started getting up to almost 11,000 tons of material in the network, and substantially all of that is in Silver Springs. There is easily, between Silver Springs and California, you are probably pushing 10,000 or 9,500 tons. From an operating perspective, we have a nice little runway to absolutely make sure that this machine can run at 25% and above that. Of course, we have panels coming in every week now, but it is not yet to the rate of 25%. I think the answer to that question, Zach, is sometime in this continuum, as we are purposely, methodically, safely ramping up and operating at this 25% for an extended period of time, as the panel rate growth continues, then we would just ramp up accordingly.
Now, I think you are alluding to the fact that each oven is about. Obviously, we have four ovens, so each one is 25% of our capacity. That is not exactly coincidental, obviously. When running at 25%, we will be fully utilizing one oven. At some point before we get to full, full, we would then operate two Ovens, and so forth and so on. I think that is a pretty straightforward answer.
Thank you, Corrado. ''How is Comstock Metals developing its customer relationships and securing the Solar panel volumes necessary for growth?''
We have taken a key account strategy. That is probably good to highlight. Over the last four months, we hired a third party. This was under direct board supervision. We hired a third party to come out and validate our engineering, all the engineering and the capacities, and the throughput and the control issues over the systems. It is very good. We also hired a third party to come out and do a market analysis. We feel like we have one of the most extensive marketing databases of every Solar installation across the country, but we revalidated it with a third party. I can say to you that there is absolutely no question as to the location, age, and magnitude of panels that are deployed across the United States. The notion that there is over 1 billion is certain. We know it, right? We know where they are.
We know what types of panels they are. We know their model, their make, their ages. What came out of that study was the assumption of how old, what is the age, what is the date that you repower, and it really validated our key customer strategy. It really validated that 85%, up to 85%, depending on how you define the segments, is large-scale utility renewable energy companies. To answer the question bluntly, we started targeting the top 15 in the nation, and we spent time getting to know them at the site level. We spent time getting to know them at the corporate level. We spent time educating them on our process. Obviously, prior to a couple months ago, our process was prospective.
We had the advantage of being able to show the demonstration facility, process materials, show that it was effective, but we never had the scale until now to showcase our true capability. The top 15 evolved to the top 30, and we have got very nice penetration in the top 30, the RWEs, the Illuminates, others that I cannot say right now, but it is double-digit numbers. It is not, "We got six of them." No, we have got the majority of them. Now, we are expanding it to the top 100. It is important to say two things, right? There is a lead time in penetrating these accounts, especially the national accounts, especially when you have to synchronize what is going on at corporate policy and corporate decision-making with what is going on at each site that is being managed b ut it is working.
It is working very well. We looked back and said, "Thank goodness we took a key account strategy," because not only are we crossing the win lines with them, but they will grow faster and bigger than the rest of the market. We are not only positioned, we feel, with the best customers. Best also implies willing to pay for this environmental service, right? Because they understand the hazardous materials, they understand the environmental liabilities, and they understand the importance of having those liabilities terminated. A lot of people do not understand that, and I mean it as a notion of just there is ignorance, right? They are not realizing what one part of the organization is doing versus the other part of the organization. A big part of our marketing is educating the market, educating the customers, educating the partners.
If you are dealing with the more sophisticated companies, it is proving to be very effective.
I do think we have a very good plan. The result of all those efforts I just mentioned was a five-year strategic plan. The plan lays out demographics, geographies, customers, regions, and the rate and method that we would roll that out, ultimately to have up to five facilities across the country, recycling these panels with the biggest customers. We are already starting to get comments from customers that are national, in terms of logistics and the other things, and we are making it work. It is a very methodical, sophisticated, customer-focused effort, and we are now increasing our resources, we are increasing our engagement, and we are already starting to see increases in panel flow. Probably it is a reassuring thing to know, just our top six or seven customers, we get steady eddy business now. Okay?
We just now will start to squeeze more of that business out of them because we have the capacity finally to do it, issuing Certificates of Destruction, doing tours of our facilities, proving now it is not, "Believe us, we can do it better than the other guy." Believe us, the other guy really cannot do what they are saying they are going to do. Those are common conversations. Now it is like, "Just let us show you." I hope that is a sufficient answer to that question, Zach.
Yes. Thank you, Corrado. Our next question is, ''What progress are you making on your proprietary Metals recovery technology, and how could recovering Silver and other valuable Metals improve the economics of the recycling business?''
I mentioned we are ahead of schedule. I do not want to overstate that. It is only a couple months, but in the real world, that is a big deal. Our proprietary Metal recovery technology really represents a significant value-increasing opportunity. The amount of value that we can recover from every Solar panel process goes up meaningfully based on our preliminary work that we have done. It is potentially a game-changer for us. Our initial focus, obviously, has always been establishing the core recycling capability first, but by being able to accelerate the project, designing the process, these are chemical processes. They take a meaningful amount of Fortunato's time.
I remember last Thanksgiving going to him saying, "When our plan was laid out, it had 12 major components in it, in the top, top right-hand corner was R&D for Metal extraction." I said, "When are we going to get to that process?" He said, "Look," and this was a year ago, "We just ordered our equipment. We don't have a plant. We don't have our permits yet, right? We're just starting to get our customers." He said, "We got to wait until at least July or August before we start thinking about those designs." He goes, "I have some notions thought out, but it's going to take a lot of work." The government did us a favor, and they put out a funding request, and we responded to that funding request, and there was a conflict there.
There was a reluctance, like, "We're going to have to put some of our capacity aside and do this." But we did it, and by January, we filed a 50-page project plan with the government. We were not optimistic that we were going to win. We kind of felt like the winners might have been predetermined. We don't know, obviously b ut once we had the plan, then we were able to engage additional resources, third-party labs, third-party chemists and engineers, and at our direction, put them to work bench testing every major part of our design. Ultimately, stress testing at somewhat higher capacities on a pilot level, each one of the process steps. I don't want you to think we had multiple ideas for multiple stages of multiple processes. We knew two or three processes might yield well, but we didn't know which would yield best or most efficiently.
We developed the proprietary downstream recovery processes, right, including the final design for our one-ton-a-day recovery plant. I guess, say it again, but I'm very pleased to report that the bench-scale testing in the first phase for Silver recovery is complete, right? It supported the pilot design, and now we're operating this one-ton-a-day Silver-first Metal recovery pilot, and hopeful to have enough operating data by the end of this year, maybe early next year. We've got to make sure that we're data-centric and we don't kid ourselves, just like we did the first process with the recycling, right? Hopefully demonstrate a significant incremental profit through just successful Silver recovery, right? Commercialization of that process would then allow us to capture more, obviously, of the value internally rather than simply selling it to these third-party refiners.
I think, look, the bottom line is in-house recovery, it's positioned to be the largest single lever on our margin that could be available to us b ut we need to quantify it, right? We can only quantify it when the pilot has sufficient data, and not before. So, feeling good, moving forward, but still quite a bit of work to do.
Thank you, Corrado. ''How do you think about your expansion strategy, and how will you balance growth with disciplined capital allocation?''
There is a tension there. As I mentioned, we completed all that third-party planning, operations, market growth, et cetera, and that lays out for us. It did as much to validate our plan, fill out some pieces of our plan, ensure sufficiency of our plan for deploying up to five recycling facilities across the country. We would be very phased for those deployments. Those deployments are capital-intensive. Some people don't think of $15 million as a lot of CapEx. We do. It's a lot of money. We take it very seriously. The notion of designing a 25,000-ton initial startup, and it's a little deceptive because in that case, we're not deploying a quarter. That picture that I showed you for serial number two, we're not deploying a quarter of the CapEx and a quarter of the equipment.
In most cases, we're deploying 50% to 100% of the infrastructure, and in the case of maybe a shredder and the ovens, we can be capital-sensitive and deploy them as needed as we go forward. Overall, we have a very clear strategic plan on where we're going to end up. We have a roadmap of how we want to get there, and then we have very disciplined notions of when is a plant stable, when is it proven to be operating effectively, is there a clear path, and operating profitably, and then we move forward. The conflict or tension that I mentioned is customers and demand. Ohio's the example where when we first started rolling out, we were Southwest U.S., Southwest U.S., Southwest U.S., and then we would start thinking about how we migrate East.
But we have three major customers in the Indiana, Ohio region that really changes the economic dynamic for us to want to move faster, but we're still being careful and we're still being methodical. So our first priority, demonstrate sustained production, improve the throughput, achieve the positive results at Silver Springs, be responsive to those national customers who, with us, are looking for the most practical and scalable solution b ut when you hook the big one, when you hook the whales, and they say, "You're the winner. You're the only one that can do this. We need you to start planning your capacity," then of course we're going to be responsive to that market demand. The other thing I guess I would say too is, some of these components of these equipments have longer lead times.
Ironically, that's not proving out true at all for the Metal extraction equipment that we're using, but the recycling system and the sophistication manufacturing, especially of those ovens, have very long lead times. We just have to be disciplined and thoughtful about which data point allows us to most frugally deploy that capital, maybe some deposits and some long lead time items. As Judd mentioned earlier, we think about this in a disciplined way for each deployment, each return, each validation, but we also think on a macro basis, what's our liquidity, what's our capital resource, and how do we best allocate that capital for the highest returns?
Thanks, Corrado. ''Pivoting to SSOF. With Newmark now engaged, how is the process progressing to unlock the value of the Sierra Springs properties, and what should investors expect as the evaluation of potential development partners moves forward?''
The process is I mentioned that we feel like we have a very unique land position in the marketplace. I think it's unique not just because of its location and some of that highway and road infrastructure, but this newly acquired access to power through the natural gas pipeline, its fiber connectivity, which I showed you on the map, its proximity to already established highly advanced manufacturing, hyperscale computing hubs, even distribution and other manufacturing. Those are all critical prerequisites. If you don't have that, Newmark or anyone sophisticated is not going to take very long to diligence you out b ut it also has very true, very transparent, and very strong political and regulatory support. Ironically, today, that's one of the most important bottlenecks to these projects getting approved.
There's a macro sentiment that seems to be against this kind of energy infrastructure, this kind of advanced technology and manufacturing development. Our regulators and our politicians, and especially the Board of County Commissioners in Lyon County who just approved the Monarch project, who just approved the Microsoft project and who are working vigorously on their diligence across the country for how to do this in the best possible way. Their view is, moratoriums are silly, moratoriums are superficial, moratoriums are a cop-out. If there is an economic opportunity that could change the face of our community for generations, then we got to get to work and make sure that we're supportive of doing it responsibly. We couldn't feel better about that situation. Obviously, the market's volatile. Obviously, people respond. Someone asked me, "What about the election yesterday?
What do you think?" These neo clouds, their market caps are very, very volatile. Neo clouds are one segment of a very, very sophisticated and elaborate supply chain. I didn't check the close, but it looked like Amazon was up 6%, Microsoft was up 5, 6%, Apple was up 5, 6%. I'm feeling very, very good about the foundational demand. I'm feeling very, very good about our supply. I'm not a negative person, right? I don't want to say I feel good about other projects being canceled or opposed, but it certainly makes our project scarcer and maybe more valuable. There's bumps all the way through that, and anyone that wants to be in permitting a hard rock mine or permitting this kind of development needs to have some fortitude, right, to work its way through.
The short answer to the first part of the question is, we are engaged every day with Newmark. There's two processes. One is to assist and support SSOF for some additional debt financing, because it owns so much property free and clear, we don't see that as a big, big hurdle, so that we can secure longer and more power for the site. That just adds value to the equation, in addition to the things that we've already done. Separately, soliciting qualifications and interest from some very, very, very sophisticated and remarkable companies that this is their priority, their strategic focus, and their space. So, I think quite a bit will happen in the fourth quarter. We'll know a lot. We'll have a lot of optionality. We won't know specifically exactly what that will be yet, but we should know relatively sooner.
We would move into 2027 with a mindset of transacting. None of that's guaranteed. It never is b ut the process is really healthy. It's moving forward, very engaged.
Corrado, ''How are you managing the financial commitments associated with the Great Basin gas infrastructure project while preserving Comstock's liquidity and flexibility?''
I believe that this expanded Great Basin infrastructure for 2028 is moving forward on all fronts. Great Basin is a wholly owned subsidiary of Southwest Gas, a NASDAQ-listed energy company. Great Basin is deploying infrastructure where they have already deployed infrastructure. People have an appreciation that they are not plowing and pioneering new ground and new pipeline pathways. They are taking existing infrastructure, which is extensive in Northern Nevada, coming right into Silver Springs already, and they are increasing that capacity. The permitting path is faster, the risk is better. I think this action is going to directly and indirectly impact Northern Nevada economics in a tremendous, multiple tremendous ways. For us, the Great Basin infrastructure agreement is an important component. It is critically important for accelerating this rapid growth in Silver Springs.
If you are in Reno, if you are in Vegas, you have infrastructure, you have a lot of power, you have a lot of utility. In Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center, in Fernley and Silver Springs, it was less so. With NV Energy being behind schedule with some of their grid deployments, Great Basin filled a huge, monstrous gap for power, and we stepped into it. We already have a surety commitment from a top insurance provider for a meaningful portion of the bonding requirement. We have not placed it yet because Great Basin is being flexible with us, and they are giving us the time to get some of the rest of these things in place. Great Basin is part of the overall Newmark-driven strategic process because they are helping us, and they are engaged with multiple counterparties for direct SSOF financing.
To be clear, we do not expect that Comstock would be borrowing that money, and we do not expect that SSOF will have any difficulty doing that on their own. So far, so good. We got to get through the process. As you can appreciate, projects like this, there are different facets, but there are also different types of counterparties looking to participate in different types of ways. You talk to hyperscalers, but you talk to advanced manufacturing companies, you talk to independent power producers, you talk to pure developers. The good news is they are all interested, right? We are simply going to try to find the best-maximizing value solution for Comstock. As Judd mentioned, we have already put $6 million in escrow. It is classified as restricted cash, and it is earning interest.
We expect once the SSOF process comes to fruition, then it will supplant that and release our restricted cash back into our treasury. So it has been a good bridge for us so far. Our objective is just to support to the maximum amount possible the value of the strategic infrastructure opportunity, this powered land opportunity, for the good of Comstock shareholders, while doing everything in our power to protect our balance sheet and maintain our liquidity for Comstock, not for Sierra Springs.
Corrado, that's a great transition for the next question. ''With a strengthened balance sheet and several strategic initiatives underway, how are you managing liquidity and future funding requirements, including Bioleum, while minimizing the need for additional Equity financing?''
I think I probably answered parts of that fragmentedly over a couple of different questions, but maybe just to summarize it, right? Judd mentioned it, right? $43.5 million of cash at the end of September. Some of it's restricted. We believe this is a very, very strong foundation for executing our near-term business priorities. We've already funded plant number one. We've already funded the one-ton-a-day pilot, okay? We're running plant number one, bringing in more panels, bringing in some cash. We're going to run the one-ton-a-day pilot. We have the funding sources to do that. We're being very, very frugal with SSOF. We're being very, very frugal with Bioleum. We're in a cost reduction mode, we're in a streamlining mode, and we're in a mode of projects need to be able to bring in their own capital to justify their own existence.
That's how it has to be. Our board is very, very, very engaged. I'm sure just throughout this conversation, you can see the effects, the very, very, very positive effects of our expanded board, our discipline, our focus, and it's just going to keep getting better. I don't need to repeat it, but I will. We have no intention, zero, and we have no expectation currently at all to issue equity now or in 2027, right? The only little bit of equity that was issued was for compensation, primarily for directors. It's very small, and it's been almost a year now. I think slowly but surely, we're starting to establish a new paradigm, right? We've simplified our business through the sale of legacy mining operations.
That didn't just generate the $20 million that we now see in the bank, but we've got 2 million shares of Mackay common stock, which today is worth, last I checked, $4.2 million. They've got a great development plan, and we hope that that goes higher b ut they owe us another $7 million next year, right? Not to mention that they took all those reclamation liabilities off our books. We're not only acting as if we have no money. We're not only very, very sensitive to the timing and return equations associated with deploying any of our money, right? But we see the possibility to be opportunistic if the share price doesn't react. We really hope that it does as we sell mining assets, bring recycling facilities online, expand extraction, and start to demonstrate value with SSOF, streamline Bioleum, reduce costs across the spectrum.
The mining sale alone took $1.5 million of annual cost out of our system b ut if we get another non-core asset sale or two or three, and we are making strategic processes of Metals, that is why the board came together and said, "We should be ready. We should be authorized, and we should be capable if the allocation of capital for that purpose, repurchasing our shares, is the best use of our capital." As fiduciaries, we need to be ready to do it.
Corrado, please address near-term monetization and potential share buybacks.
I think the near-term monetization, Zach, would be things like, could we monetize those Mackay shares a little bit earlier? We got some inquiry about that. We do not know if that is real or not, but it is possible. We see some things happening on the Green Li-ion side that starts to give us some hope that that is something that might happen. SSOF is the big one, right? As I mentioned earlier, there will be a lot of options. We have so many different types of players. There is a lot of options. They are all positive, but which ones will give us cash money early? Which ones will give us high value early? Which one will give us cash and high value later? We do not know yet. We sincerely do not know, but we know that we are going to see options in that realm.
I think that is it. The only other one is just reminding everybody that when we bring in Solar panels, we get paid a tipping fee upfront. The tipping fee is robust, it is strong, it has held up, we are happy about it, and that is another way to see cash inflowing. So, those are the near-term ones, Zach, that near-term could be intermediate term. It could always be a little bit longer term. We do not know.
Okay, Corrado , here's the last question. ''As you look toward 2027, what are the most important milestones investors should watch, and why are you optimistic about Comstock's future?''
I meant to say one more thing, Zach Spencer, on that last question.
Okay.
Because you asked about monetization and buyback, I think I answered the monetization part. On the buyback part, I want to be clear that the buyback authorization is based on our views of the current stock price. We're just super hyper-focused on the exciting growth prospects of Metals. There is no immediate repurchase until Comstock's a little further along with the various initiatives that we just talked about. The last thing we want to do is buy back a bunch of stock, find out there's an exciting growth opportunity, and then be caught. We're looking at our liquidity preciously, maintaining minimum levels, allocating very carefully, allocating time sensitively, and really changing the view of the discipline, maybe is the better word. Changing the discipline of how we do it, and treating everything we think about dearly and on a per-share basis.
Sorry about that. I just want to reinforce, especially to these incredible shareholders that we have, the long-term investors who have been patient, and we know it's frustrating, but we just do not have any current plans to raise additional equity capital. On the contrary, if opportunity presents itself, maybe we can do the opposite.
Okay, yeah. Thanks for doing that, Corrado. There were several questions about the buyback program, so that was important. Thank you. Then real quickly, that final question. ''As you look toward 2027, what are the most important milestones investors should watch, and why are you optimistic about Comstock's future?''
Well, as we think about 2027, I know it's November already, and we think about what the most important milestones that people should watch, I really think we've entered one of the most exciting periods in our development. We've been a change agent, we've been transformational. Yeah, yeah, right? Show me the money. Let's get going here, right? We're finally at a point where the investments we've made translate into increased revenues, improved cash flow, and potentially, as we just said, right, the opportunity to capitalize on those investments. So for me, for the next six to nine months, our emphasis is squarely on expanding our existing key customer base. It's the number one thing, expand our key customer base. We have done a yeoman's effort in establishing a key customer base. We have one, okay? Now we need to expand it.
We need to squeeze more out of the existing base, and we need to expand it to more and more customers, right? Securing those supply contracts and just continuing this ramp up to beyond, up to and beyond that initial 25%, as we're able to create that demand and grow it. They're out there, so we're going to do it. Secondly, operate this one-ton-per-day pilot that can recover Silver products and other Metals. In doing so, we want to demonstrate and validate what the speed and magnitude of those improved economics look like. It's shaping up very interestingly, right? We'll consider the capital that's required. We'll consider the payback and returns. We'll consider the strategic implications on our business, and we'll just decide what the most productive capital allocation decision is.
But I do think that'll happen because of the thing being up and running now, sometime over the next, I don't know, three or four months. Then, hopefully conclude, right, or at a minimum, be deeply underway on SSOF processes and transactions that we're working on with Newmark. I mentioned it could take a number of different paths, depending on what we decide is the best, highest monetization and impact for our investors. We also are going to expand the network, if you're talking about that intermediate timeframe, and most likely order some of the longer lead time equipments for our second industry scale facility. That's a reasonable amount of money. It's not a small amount of money, it's a reasonable amount of money. But if you've got eight or nine-month lead time for deploying a system, you need to be on top of it.
I can assure you, Fortunato's on top of it. We just will remain disciplined on those stage gates. I would say, I think I've already said it, the focus on reducing cost, the focus on reducing uses of capital for other investments. I love what Judd said. We went from the first half of the year being a user of cash for investments to the second half of the year now being a source of cash for investments. Let's keep that going, hopefully, especially with the work that we're doing with SSOF. That'll be a multi-stage process, but hopefully that each stage is very good and very exciting. I want to say, we can't control short-term market movements, but we certainly can control our execution, our allocation, our operating performance, and how we effectively communicate those things to the market.
This is a first-of-a-kind facility. Mea culpa, we confused some people with these operating rates. If there is still confusion about our ramp-up to 25% of our operating continuously, of what that means to us, please don't hesitate to reach out and call us. We want that to be clear, right? There's nothing but transparency here. We just want people to know. I'm doing this as much because we have so many customers that are visiting the plant now, but I've typically offered investors, if you want to come out and see it, I won't get in Fortunato or the operator's way, but either Judd or I can take people through and see the facility operating. People usually leave very comfortable when they do that. We're focused on all of that continued type of execution, our balance sheet. The strong prior funding put us in a great place.
Asset sales allow us to look beyond this near-term market volatility. We're calm on our side. There's no joy or happiness when the share price is down. There's real disappointment when we lose an investor, okay? We don't want that. We want to grow and continue to grow this very, very good and still strong institutional base. It's an opportunity, if nothing else, at these levels. We hope that that goes well. I think probably, Zach, is there any more questions?
No more questions, Corrado, and we are coming up on time. I think we've covered all of the important questions. If we did not get to your question, please send it to ir@comstockinc.com, and we'll do our best to respond either directly or we'll post the response on X. For anyone who is not following us on X, our main account is @ComstockInc. Please follow us. Corrado, before we wrap up, do you have any final thoughts for the remainder of Q4 and the rest of 2026?
I really just would say thank you, everybody, for sticking with us. Thank you for being interested. We would love to see people grow their position. We think it is best time to be doing that is now. I am sure some of us will be doing that. It is good. I want to thank our team, from Judd to Zach to Fortunato and everybody else. I mean, what we have accomplished just in these first three quarters, I know things are not to the finish line. I know there is a show me the money, but raising that equity capital from top institutional investing, funding our Metals business, funding those powered land expansions, put us in the position that we are today. We wiped out the debt. We extended our board. We have added directors who represent significant shareholders, and they bring not only needed but welcome skill sets.
I couldn't be happier with the way the entire board is cooperating and dedicating their skills to us as we need them. Be it SSOF, be it Metals, be it the Solar markets, be it strategic planning, it has just been fantastic. We have already seen significantly increase insider ownership and look to see that continue. We did complete and sell the mining assets, improve the liquidity, reduce the cost. We have commissioned the first-of-its-kind commercial plant with continuous operations. We have extended the upgraded production lines for Glass. We have advanced and accelerated the Metal recovery. We have secured top customers. We have some of the best names, and we have positioned that to grow, especially now that we are issuing Certificates of Destruction. We have selected the second site. We have designed the second plant.
We have increased our ownership in SSOF to almost 50% and acquired debt-free over 2,200 acres of land in that portfolio simultaneously, while bringing in the rights of energy for that energy infrastructure to unlock all that value. We have advanced rezoning. We have secured surety bonding from leading surety bonders. We completed a fatal flaw analysis, third party. That was another thing that we did. Even before we engaged Newmark, we had a third party come in and do a fatal flaw analysis of all the SSOF properties and the infrastructures surrounding it. All that was super supportive of engaging Newmark and look, positions us for the last point. Just recently, the board authorized our first-ever stock buyback program for up to 15 million shares, and let us see how that goes.
It really, to me, reflects the confidence in the existing plan, the balance sheet, and these monetization opportunities. I guess I didn't mean to do a recap like that, but I wanted to thank the investors for their patience. I want to thank our business teams for their efforts.
Well, thank you, Corrado. That concludes Comstock's third quarter 2026 earnings call and business update. Thank you all for joining us.
Thank you.