Welcome back, everyone. 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.
Great to be here with you. It's always fun. We'll get right into it today. The standard forward-looking statements will apply to my presentation. Let's get into the presentation. A lot of positive change since I was here last time. I guess it was only a couple of months ago, but a lot has changed for the better since we last spoke, at both the macro level for the industry as well as at the Odyssey company level. At the macro level, a lot of U.S. policy shifts and investments in the sector have come out in the past two months, and that's driving a huge opportunity in the industry. Odyssey is one of only two ways that investors can play this investment opportunity in U.S.-listed companies. We're well positioned.
We've spent the past 15 years studying where the best seafloor mineral opportunities would be around the world and have built a diversified portfolio of projects that give us diversification from both commodity risk and geopolitical risk. Having operated in the deep ocean environment for over 30 years now, we really understand how to complete these projects successfully. As part of that, we've really learned how to navigate the regulatory landscape that will guide who's going to be most successful in bringing these projects into production. At the company level, huge balance sheet improvements since we last spoke. Some of our largest long-term investors have executed outstanding options and warrants, bringing in over $8 million of working capital. That'll fund operations, base operations, well into next year.
Also, some of those same investors and other debt providers have converted over $9.5 million of debt since we last spoke, reducing our outstanding debt by over 53%. I think an important takeaway here is you see some of our largest long-term investors increasing their bet on Odyssey . I think that's a tribute to them seeing how we're executing, but also this macro environment, how positively it's changing for investors. The other thing I'd note is that our partner in our Mexico project, which I'll talk about in a second, is not only really excited about that project, he's now become one of the largest shareholders in Odyssey . I think you see, I'm going to say a lot of smart money, increasing their exposure since we last spoke. I mentioned this, the U.S. policy shift.
In April, President Trump issued an executive order that really focused our government on advancing the acquisition of critical minerals from all sources, including seafloor. There's been some significant movement in that space. Over $1 billion is proposed in federal funding to accelerate this effort. A recent example for those of you that may have been following this is MP Materials. That's a rare earth player in the U.S. that just received a $400 million direct investment from DoD and some really valuable offtake agreements. I think we're going to see more of those deals out there. Odyssey' s team in Washington is focused on making sure that Odyssey is well positioned for those opportunities. I mentioned over the past 15 years, we've studied where the best mineral opportunities are around the world, and some of them are right here in U.S.-controlled waters.
Frankly, until this policy shift took place, Odyssey wasn't really incented to bring these projects forward. That's changed now. Stay tuned, but I think you'll see some activity from us in this realm, now that this positive policy shift has gone on. Odyssey had the foresight, over four years ago now, to get qualified as a BOEM contractor. BOEM is the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. That's the U.S. government agency that regulates who gets mining rights in U.S. waters. We're well positioned for what's happened here in the past couple of months. I mentioned there's a momentum shift around the world as well. Cook Islands is a great example. The photo here, the gentleman in the suit is David Copley. He's President Trump's Senior Critical Mineral Advisor in the White House. He went to the Cook Islands, and the U.S.
government signed a deal just two weeks ago now with the Cook Islands, a cooperative agreement around the seafloor minerals. They're polymetallic nodules. There's estimated to be 12 billion wet tons of nodules in the Cook Islands' waters. Odyssey Marine Exploration's had a longstanding relationship. We've worked with the government for more than 12 years now as they developed their regulatory regime. We have investments in two out of the three license holders currently in the Cook Islands, and we have most of our super sophisticated deep ocean equipment stationed and working in the Cook Islands right now. Our timing couldn't have been better here as well, that this announcement has just been made. I'll kind of wind down with what's the investment opportunity right now for investors.
I think that's going to be the delta or the arbitrage between what the potential value of our projects will be worth and what our current market cap is. PHOSAGMEX, by the way, this is only three of our projects. We have other projects in development. I'm just highlighting our top three right now. PHOSAGMEX is our Mexican phosphate project. This project could resolve, will, would resolve Mexico's food security issues, but also food security issues throughout the Americas and elsewhere. This is really a strategically important project. We have the absolute right partner. Our partner is a major player in the Mexican ag industry. The government relies on him as an advisor because of his experience. Odyssey owns 35% of this entity.
I expect that once the summer break has finished for governments around the world, including in Mexico, we'll have some significant movement in advancing this project. You should look forward to reports that I hope we'll be issuing this fall about how progress is being made on that project. I mentioned a couple of times now, we have investments in two of the three license holders in the Cook Islands, OML . We own 7% of . OML r ecently got a JORC report. That's an independent valuation of the size and quality of their mineral resource. OML has issued a $4.7 billion valuation as a result of that independent report. CIC has not issued their resource estimate. We're using the same valuation for CIC , but I think that's a conservative estimate to use because they have the adjacent license area.
The mineralogy is exactly the same, and CIC has an area that's 10x the size of OML , but we're just using the same valuation. That's not a number provided by CIC , but that's the explanation of why we used it. You run the numbers here. You have a range of $700 million to $1.4 billion just between these three projects. Even if you discount the low end of the range, it's pretty obvious that that's a huge multiple of our current market cap. I'll stop there and we can go to questions if you'd like.
Okay, Mark, thank you so much. Yes, some investors may still see ocean minerals as a distant concept, but in the U.S., it seems the government is moving pretty quickly, shifting from policy intent to tangible action. Talk about how this acceleration is creating real near-term opportunities for companies like Odyssey .
It's a really good question. I’ve touched on that, I guess, a couple of times. The government is changing policy, which is significant, to really encourage companies like Odyssey Marine Exploration to invest in projects here in the U.S. and abroad, like the Cook Islands. They're voting with their wallets. You look at that MP deal, they just put $400 million, DoD just put $400 million in a direct equity investment into a U.S. company. I think you're going to see more transactions like that. Odyssey is chasing those transactions. We hope to be the beneficiary of similar programs.
Perfect. One second, I lost my spot. There we go. You mentioned there are only a handful of ways for investors to access the space. The Metals Company often comes up. Expand on how Odyssey differs and what sets you apart from an investment opportunity.
Yeah, so, look, The Metals Company, TMC, trades in the U.S. It's the other U.S. pure play company. We have a great amount of respect for them, good relationships with their management. I think the main difference in our strategy is, to date, TMC is really focused on polymetallic nodules only and in the area of the ocean that to date has been regulated by the United Nations, but may now soon be regulated by the U.S. Another important policy shift. By contrast, Odyssey has built smaller ownership positions in a number of different projects. I think that's probably the major difference between the two of us, that we're spreading our bet a little bit more. I think, you know, both are great companies to invest in. I'm an investor in TMC personally.
Okay, wonderful. Thank you for this update, Mark. We appreciate it. Exciting time in your realm, and we look to see you again real soon.
Great. Great to be with you again.
Awesome. Okay, everyone, we'll be right back. C3 Metals Inc. trades on the TSX.V under the symbol CCCM and on the [OTCQB] under the symbol CUAUF. It's a mineral exploration company focused on creating substantive value for its shareholders through the discovery and development of large copper and gold deposits. Please welcome President, CEO, and Director Dan Symons . Nice to see you, Dan. Welcome back.
Thanks, Anna. Thanks for having me back.
All right, the floor is yours.
Perfect. Thank you. For those of you hearing this story, maybe for the first time, we'll give a high-level overview. For those of you who saw us last time when we were here with Emerging Growth in April, I thought it would just be fitting to talk about share price performance of the company as of just a couple of days ago this week, just compared to probably the two most relevant ETFs, the Junior Gold Miners Index and the Copper Miners Index, or ETFs. You know, we've outperformed since last appearing with Emerging Growth, up 34% since that time. Year to date, we're up 284%. It is still a good time for people who like to stock pick. If you get it right, you can significantly outperform. Just a reminder who we are is our team, our board of management, combined over 180 years of experience in this industry.
We've created billions of dollars of value in this sector. We've raised billions of dollars of capital via both the equity and debt capital markets for exploration and mine building, which has led to billions of dollars of positive M&A transactions for shareholders of previous companies. We're out here trying to do it again. Combined, we've discovered and/or delineated over 34 billion pounds of copper and 50 million ounces of gold with this team. Another unique thing about us as a small company, between the insiders of the company and institutions, for a company that's, in U.S. market cap terms, sitting around $65 million, we are very heavily institutionally held, where usually it's typically the other way around, more retail held.
Given our track record and our project and asset base now that we've set up the company, we are in a position with over 65% of our shares held by insiders and institutional investors. Pretty simple business strategy, and we're very disciplined about it. We're focused on copper gold assets. We think we're good at identifying early-stage opportunities and building district-scale properties around those opportunities to be sizable enough for majors in the future. We do enough exploration to gather enough technical data to get to a decision point, either to divest the asset if it's not going to meet our criteria. Sometimes we'll look at partnering assets if there is significant potential, but it's a bit capital intensive and beyond our scale for the size of the company. Also, sometimes there's synergies with neighboring companies that we have to keep in mind.
If we find something that's good grade mineralization near surface, it's low capital intensity just to drill the heck out of it. That's what we're going to do. When we look at our projects right now and where we are, the three that we're very active on today are two in Jamaica and one in Peru. I'll go through these in a little bit more detail here in a moment. At a very high level in Jamaica, we have the Super Block project, which we partnered with a neighboring company to unlock geologic synergies. It was very clear we each had part of an epithermal gold system. We're actively drilling on that project today. Also in Jamaica, today we own 100% of the Bellas Gate project.
It's 130 sq km , but we have Freeport-McMoRan, the largest copper producer in the world, fully funding that project and earning in by spending up to $75 million to earn 75% in the project. This is one of those ones that has very significant potential. Obviously, for a company like Freeport to get involved, it has to, and it could have the potential to be very large, but it will be capital intensive. Instead of us issuing a billion shares to move this project forward, we brought in a big brother partner, and we're actively drilling there today as well. We just announced this week our Khaleesi project in Peru. We are now fully permitted, and we have social license from the local community to go out and start drilling. We intend to kick off the maiden drill program, the first one ever on this project, starting next month.
We're in a unique position being a little $65 million market cap company, fully funded with three projects moving simultaneously. I'll just walk through each of these projects at a deeper level, just quickly here. On the left, you see the outline, that blue outline is the Super Block project. You can see that arrow pointing to the past producing Pennants Mine. This was a really rinky-dink operation that closed in 2004, but it is the last metallic gold mine outside of the bauxite industry in Jamaica, where mining is the number two industry. You can see this black line. This used to be our concession boundary by partnering with our neighbor. Now we have 50% of everything within this blue line, and that includes the past producing Pennants Mine. While we're primarily copper-focused, when we look at the historical resource here, it was running at 20 g per ton.
A very significant high-grade gold is too hard to ignore. Today, the pit's about 30 m deep with the average drill depths about 80 m deep, with multiple intercepts into high-grade gold below and outside the pit. We're excited to get back here and we're actively drilling today. By putting their properties together with our neighboring company, Geophysx Jamaica Ltd., a private company in Jamaica, we were able to identify that the old past producing mine is right in the center of what now we know is a 5 km-long gold trend. This is a project where the scale of the project has grown significantly over the last year. Moving over, that's what we're active on there at the Super Block. We're drilling on that now and we expect to have assays coming out here just in the next couple of weeks.
Moving over just to the right side of where we are in Jamaica, this is 130 sq km outlined in that red color. This is where Freeport's earning in and funding 100% of the investment. We're really more focused with Freeport on these porphyry prospects depicted by these stars. Porphyry is again the large, big number one source of copper in the world, from mines in the world. These are the types of deposits that are capital intensive, but all the major companies love them because once you get them into production, they're usually running 30, 40, 50 + years, providing steady cash flow. We had identified 14 porphyry prospects over an 18-kilometer strike extent.
We ourselves had drilled four of the 14 and we had some pretty good results, 200 m - 300 m averaging about 0.5% - 0.6% copper equivalent, where the average operating open pit mine today is running at 0.5% copper. We're well in line with the average operating grades today. We're very active with Freeport today. We're testing some of these other 10 stars or porphyry prospects down to 500 m, with a drill rig we already had in country, as well as we've just kicked off a very extensive geophysical survey that will allow us to see IP chargeability down to the depth of 1,000 m. That will really inform where we want to start poking some deeper holes into this system. Once we gather that data, we plan to move to a deeper drill program.
Not to be forgotten is what we're doing in Peru, because I actually believe this is a potential to be the top catalyst for us here in 2025. It took us about 2.5 years to consolidate 310 sq km . I think we have one of the biggest positions, if not the biggest, of a junior exploration company along this very well-known world-class copper producing belt. It produces the third most copper in the world after Chile and the DRC. We're less than 45 km from the very well-renowned Las Bambas mine, also less than 45 km from the Constancia mine. Also on this belt is Antapaccay, operated by Glencore, and the Cerro Verde mine, which is ironically Freeport's second largest producer.
Beyond that, you have BHP here in the light blue, Rio Tinto in the dark blue, Teck Resources in the pink, Barrick in the green, First Quantum Minerals in the yellow color. These are all intermediate to major mining companies with exploration stage projects as well. We're in and surrounded by all the big boys. We came into this property by acquiring 57 sq km by acquiring a private company on the central eastern project area. We identified 15 targets to go after on this property. We drilled into the first one on the eastern side of the property. That gave us a resource, which really underpins our value, where we have a pit-constrained resource. We looked at, assume, $3 copper and $1,800 gold on that pit a couple of years ago, and it gave us an in-pit of 570 million pounds of copper and 326,000 ounces of gold.
When we saw, as we were expanding our land position, what we were seeing on the left side or the western side of the property at Khaleesi, we got really excited. That's where we've been spending our focus because all these major mines along this belt are formed along the contact between this rock you see in the teal color, which is a limestone, and this purple color, which you see is a batholith. This has been underexplored. This particular area has never had a drill hole. We're going to put our first drill holes ever into this area shortly. What gets us really excited is, you know, when we ran the soil geochemistry in our industry, we get excited about anything over 300 parts per million copper in soil.
That's usually a very good indicator of a drill target and something that warrants testing because of a high probability of potential economic viability in the deposit. We look at what we uncovered here earlier this year. We have, on the eastern side of this project, a 1.9 km by 650 m area where the northern half is averaging 650 ppm copper, which is more than double what usually gets us excited. The southern half's averaging 950 ppm copper, so triple gets us excited. The area over the scarring zone's averaging 1,260 ppm, so quadruple what gets us excited. We then went and ran geophysics. On the top, you're looking at a bird's eye view directly under where we have that 1,260 ppm copper in soils, very large magnetic anomaly. Also, where we have the 950 ppm copper in soils, very large magnetic anomaly.
If we take a slice along that, looking at that black line on the top image, and then instead of moving down to the bottom of this slide, instead of looking at it from a bird's eye view, now taking a slice in the earth from the side, looking at the chargeability, which picks up the sulfide minerals, you can see how big this system looks at depth, and that it looks like it's connected. We're pretty excited. We're about to put the first drill holes into it. We're fully permitted. Where we do have outcropping rock, we're getting good grades and we're seeing the right type of minerals like bornite and chalcopyrite at surface. This is definitely a big target for us and a chance for a new made-in-discovery in the industry.
I just think it's a unique place to be being a company with, you know, we're again of around a $65 million market cap, U.S., with about $10 million in cash. We're fully funded for all our programs because we have partners on some of the programs. We have major companies who've done diligence on our assets and wanted to get involved. We're very disciplined about managing risk and making sure that we're balancing shareholder corporate equity dilution by bringing in partners at the right time. That's really a good summary of where we are today, a unique position of three projects going all at the same time, all fully funded. We should be having a lot of news flow here just starting in the next couple of weeks on drill assays, and it should continue throughout the year.
Awesome. Thank you, Daniel. We are out of time. We've got a lot of questions for you. We'll send them to you so you can answer on your own. Thank you for this update.
Thank you very much, Anna.
All right, everyone, we'll be right back.