We have an update from Odyssey Marine Exploration. Trades on the NASDAQ under the symbol OMEX. It's an ocean explorer committed to sustainable and responsible discovery, validation, and advancement of seafloor critical mineral projects including polymetallic nodules for battery metals and subsea phosphate deposits for fertilizers. Happy to welcome back Chairman and CEO Mark Gordon. Welcome back, Mark.
It's great to be here with you again and I'll jump right in. Standard forward looking information disclosures apply to the projections we'll be discussing today. It was just about two months ago today that I first presented at your conference and it was great. Happy to be back to do this update. A lot's happened since then. We'll get into some of that in the update. I guess most notably our stock closed at $0.69 April 16th when we were here last and two months later we're trading over $1.20. I'll try to explain what I think drivers are for the current increase and where I think we're going from here starting real quick overview on the opportunity and then our business. The opportunity is look every seafloor, I'm sorry, every mineral we can get on dry land, we could get on the ocean floor.
We're primarily focused in three areas, you touched on them, battery metals to power the green energy revolution. We're also heavily focused on phosphate for world food security. It's the primary ingredient in fertilizer that can't be lab created, but we have a tremendous deposit off Mexico, and then we also have critical minerals and precious metals in the portfolio. I think, you know, look at our current market cap, it belies the depth of knowledge that we have to really exploit this opportunity. Odyssey has been operating for 30 years in the deep ocean, really difficult environment, high barriers to entry, and we've proven ourselves time and again the ability to pull off complicated projects in very deep water.
We also bring a diverse portfolio of projects, different mineral sets, different geographic areas, and what that allows us to do is shift depending on commodity cycles and geopolitical situations. We can move from project to project. Really unique difference between being a terrestrial miner where you're very locked in to a single location. Of course you got to expect as the Chairman and CEO I'm going to say our stock is undervalued. I think it is. Especially when you look at a historical chart, you'll see that we've had a substantially higher market valuation over the years and we're coming back right now. When we talk about the value of these assets, I think you'll be able to do the math for yourself on what the upside opportunity is here.
The final point is that as we go through our different projects, if we have even modest success on a single one of these projects, it's a huge multiple to our current market cap. With that, what's happened since April that's significant? One thing that's super significant is President Trump issued an executive order to accelerate seafloor mineral extraction. This doesn't only have an impact on what's going to happen in the U.S. but what's happening worldwide. I think if you look right now, there are two ways you can play seafloor mineral extraction with publicly traded companies in the U.S., and that would be OMEX, Odyssey Marine Exploration, and The Metals Company, TMC.
I noticed that TMC hit a 52 week high today and I think a lot of that is the momentum that's coming off this executive order and the attention our space is starting to get. The other thing, when we look at Odyssey, we regain NASDAQ listing compliance. Since I was last here, we had been trading below the $1 minimum bid price. We have since cured that. We have had a significant influx of capital from long term investors who are exercising options and warrants, excited about this opportunity that's ahead of us. We have been funded quite significantly since I was last here. When you look at our project set and what you should focus on as investors if you're interested in following OMEX would be the projects I have mentioned earlier. Fosigmex is our Mexican phosphate project there.
Just in the past week or two, we've made significant strides setting up a joint venture there with our Mexican partner, transferring the mining concession rights over. Also, Odyssey has significantly increased its stake in the joint venture, having gone from 28% to 35% just last week. When we look at the Cook Islands there, we're invested in two out of the three license holders, OML and CIC. OML has done substantial work on gathering their environmental data and they're on track to submit for an extraction permit by late 2026. That project's moving along on the planned timeline and moving up the value curve to where they're heading towards revenue and profit production and therefore increasing the value of the asset. Also, they've done significant work on their pre feasibility study.
Anyone that's listening that invests in mining companies understands the significance of that independent report that will validate the value of that asset, and they're pretty far along on that report right now. CIC is embarking right now on a minimum of three month environmental exploration campaign. We're seeing, you know, good momentum and support from the Cook Islands government, which are critical to both of those projects realizing their full value quickly. This will be my last slide. We can transition to questions. When you look at these projects, sort of what are the values looking like at this moment? Fosigmex, the Mexican phosphate project. Currently we have an internal net present value of $1.3 billion on that project. The column to the left, 50% NPV, is just that.
We just cut the NPV projection in half to set up a range of values that show up in the far right column. Last time I was here reporting, Odyssey had 28%. Our ownership value in the right column has gone up now to about $212 -$439 million projected value. Using those range of values, OML, we currently own approximately 7% of that. You see the $4.7 billion NPV is a NPV that has been published by the company, by OML. Here again, we just cut it in half to set up a lower end range. With CIC, these numbers are not provided by CIC. To be clear, they have not provided valuations yet. However, for purposes of this presentation, we are just using the OML value. Here is why. CIC has the adjacent license area and it is 10 times the size of OML.
We thought a conservative proxy for their value would be to use the value projected by OML on their license area, sets up a range of values of $710 million-$1.4 billion. Potential asset value accruing to Odyssey based on Odyssey's ownership interest. Again, obviously that's a huge multiple of our current market cap, which is, I think, where the upside opportunity lies. In my opening statement, I said even modest success in any one of these single projects should lead to a nice upside for investors. With that, I'm done with my program statements and we can switch into Q and A if you'd like.
Great, thank you, Mark. Let's go back to Trump's executive order, if you can briefly explain that. How does Odyssey, how is it positioned to help?
Yeah, great. That's a great question. The executive order, in simple terms, mandates acceleration of permitting to promote mineral extraction from the sea floor, also associated processing. I can tell you I've been spending a lot of time in Washington D.C. the past couple of months. Almost every executive branch, congressional and Senate operation I meet with now has people focused on critical minerals as a result of this initiative. It does a couple of things. One, there are mineral opportunities in the United States. Odyssey, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, BOEM, regulates seafloor minerals. Odyssey has been a BOEM certified contractor since 2021, so four years now. The regulations were not really there for us to pursue opportunities in U.S. waters, and now they are. I also see this as having global impacts, which we can talk about as well if you'd like.
Yes, let's talk about that. Especially the EO impact Odyssey's global strategy. Do you see it influencing how other countries approach the seabed mineral development?
Yes, I do. I think that maybe I'm oversimplifying it, but when you're doing something that's completely new, which seafloor mineral extraction at this scale is new? I mean, there's been seafloor mineral extraction going on in the North Sea for over 40 years. That's how the U.K. gets most of its aggregates for road building. De Beers. For over 20 years now, gem grade diamonds have been coming from the ocean. Going after these other mineral sets, battery metals, phosphates, et cetera, is relatively new. Getting someone to go first and validate the idea, in my experience, drives other governments to also focus in. Now, some of them candidly are ahead of the U.S. Cook Islands has been working diligently for over a dozen years on their regulations.
They've been leading, but I think even for the Cook Islands, it's probably nice to see another significant government saying they think this is a good idea. Same with Norway. Odyssey, as I mentioned earlier, has a portfolio of projects around the world and we've built a data, we have a proprietary system to identify the best opportunities. We've looked at 120 different exclusive economic zones and we have at least 60 projects that rate number one, our highest rating right now. We think this EO driving the global macro environment will be great for the projects we have here in the U.S. as well as abroad.
Wonderful. Exciting time to be in your industry. Mark, thank you for coming back on the conference and please keep coming back and giving us updates.
Will do. Thanks. Great being with you.
All right, everyone, we'll be right back.
Sam.
Sa.
Sam,
welcome back.
Today we have an update from Interstellar Communication Holdings, a holding company that connects and consolidates space related companies, enabling entrepreneurs and investors to tap into the vast potential of the universe. They've been here before, sharing their vision and progress in space communication and PocketQube, it's a satellite technology. Today, they're here to share their latest milestones and what lies ahead. Their space ambassador, Saida, has recently attended several events in Europe, connecting with partners and gaining unique insights. She'll share how their work is expanding across borders and even feels like it's bridging moments across time and space. Saida, welcome back to the conference. Excited to hear your update.
Thank you very much, Anna. It's always awesome to be here and giving more updates, giving more information about our adventure. As you just said, we had new adventures and this is really important for us to share with everyone. We actually started, that's what we would like to call, we are bridging stars and innovation and this is our European chapter. I was in Glasgow in February to attend PocketQube Conference. This is a conference that all PocketQube community and Cubesat community is there, scientists, wonderful companies. Our wonderful partner Alba Orbital was one of the organizers together with the Glasgow City Council. We were in that wonderful platform of Glasgow University. It was a very enriching experience for me and I was so lucky to talk about Astra Mine Program of IC Mercury in front of all those professionals.
There were also some students, they asked us wonderful questions and we had a very good time just talking about our vision, learning more about the professionals already in the field. Sent a few PocketQubes because we already sent our first PocketQube and it was great, you know, not history and great success for us, but it was also very wonderful to hear. Everybody was greeting us, gave us new ideas and we actually started to connect more companies and more solution providers in the PocketQube community who would like to be our next Astra Mine Program partners. There was a lot of wins in our end, but we did not stop there. I was, as I said, very lucky to present Astra Mine Collaboration Program and I would like to just give a little bit of information. What was it about?
As we already told you, this project is about University of Arizona and IC Mercury Project. We brought together University of Arizona's Mind Automation and Autonomous Systems Laboratory and they have a lot of resources and we have some insights, we have some projects. We just brought everything together to create this amazing program to help space companies and mining companies to talk and find solution in the same platform. As I said, we did a very good start with the PocketQube Conference 2025, but we didn't stop there. Our next chapter was in Luxembourg Space Resources Week 2025 and Space Resources Week is an annual meeting, an annual seminar organized by European Space Council and European Space Resources and Innovation Research Academy. I was again very lucky to speak in front of professionals, scientists and there were actually a few mining companies as well.
That was really extra exciting for us to hear their ideas and talk about how we can bring space companies and mining companies together. What I experienced during all those three days in Luxembourg, by the way, it was my first time in Luxembourg and it's a great country. I love the people and everything was really nice besides the awesome organization. They gave us a lot of new ideas and we were really lucky to speak about our vision about how we can bring space companies and mining companies. What we experience during those meetings is the mining companies would like to see some solutions that they could utilize in the terrestrial world first and after that they may think about extraterrestrial adventures as they say.
I think we did a very great job to found and show them the common sense and how we can do it together. Not only utilizing our resources in environmentally friendly together with the satellite technology, but also we can think about moon and Mars missions together with the extraction using the moon regolith and how we can establish our next chapter in this space. That was really nice to get all this feedback and we also learned a lot from their perspective and we do not want to stop there. In another news, Interstellar Communication Holdings also nominated for Go Global Awards in 2025. Go Global Awards is really unique, very important for us because it is. This is how we met. We can also give a little bit of information if we have left any time.
We met in one Go Global Awards three years ago with Harry and Lee J. This is our second time to be invited as a nominee. Last time we already won an award and we would like to repeat it again. We do not know, just fingers are crossed. Thank you very much for International Trade Council for help, you know, helping us to, to giving us inspiration. We cannot wait to be in London in our next chapter and tell you more about it. I just would like to say a few more words. You know, I know these days time feels and moves really strangely. Sometimes fast, sometimes uncertain, and sometimes even heavy. In the middle of all of that, I often think about why we still look at up the stars.
At Interstellar Communication Holdings we have been working hard not to change the world at once, but to build something small and meaningful. A signal that reaches beyond the earth. A message that says connection is still possible across distance, across time and what do you think about the rest, Perry?
Thank you, Sarah. Sometimes our work feels technical, even abstract satellite frequencies. But behind it's a simple hope that by opening new ways to communicate, we might help bring a little more understanding in the world. I know many of us are doing our best, each in our own way. Third, we all moving toward a fast, sometimes chaotic moment in history. I believe we still headed towards something beautiful, not because it's easy or certain, but because we haven't given up on imagining it. How about Lizzie?
All right, so today we share not just updates, it's also a quiet reminder that even in the world spinning fast, we can still choose to look up and keep working toward the future we believe in. We'll be very happy to take any questions.
Wonderful. Great job, guys. I can't wait to get my own satellite. A lot of our viewers are very interested in this as well. A question from Carter. Since space is global, are you going to be marketing your product to other countries? Do the consumers have to take possession of the satellite prior to launching it?
Actually, this is a global activity. Our partners, including Hydrospace and Alba Orbital, they already have clients from many different places on earth. Because PocketQube is really a good entry point for students. Some of the manufacturer team we interviewed in the past were actually high school students. You'll be surprised how younger generation are thinking another dimension much faster than the adults. Yes, it is a global activity and no one want to be left behind. It is a good area and a new commercialization process to enter into.
Wonderful. A viewer, Candace, asks where can they see your board presentation? Do you have that on your website?
Yes, we made a lot of the presentations with Emerging Growth Conference in the past. It's online and we also have an investor relations page that shows our progress along with our news release. Yeah, we'll be happy to constantly make updates about our progress and make our company as transparent as we can and to build a transparent platform to allow people to work with us together there.
Wonderful. Thank you all so much for this update. Always enjoy having you on the conference. It is exciting news. Wherever you guys are, you are all over the world and what you are doing for us connecting with space. Thank you so much and we look forward to seeing you again hopefully real soon.
Thank you very much.
Bye.
All right, bye everyone. We'll be right back with our next presenter.