Good day and welcome to Q1 Virtual Investor Summit. We appreciate your participation in today's virtual event. Up next, we are pleased to introduce US Antimony Corporation. If you would like to ask a question during the webcast, you may submit them at any time by clicking the Ask Question button on the left side of your screen. Please type your question into the box and click Send to submit it. At this time, it is my pleasure to hand over to Gary Evans, Chairman and CEO at US Antimony, who will lead the presentation. Sir, the floor is yours.
Thank you very much, and thank all of you listeners for dialing in today for this investor virtual presentation. Our company is headquartered in Dallas, Texas. We have been around for a long time, 1968. We've been publicly traded on the NYSE since 2012. We are basically an antimony smelter, which is a midstream, downstream business, and we're also in the process of upstream being a miner of antimony, and we'll talk about that today. We also have another business called Zeolite, and that is located up in Idaho, and we'll discuss that. I am going to next give you just our forward-looking statements. I am likely going to say some things that's a bit of a forecast today. This is our mission here is described. Everything in red are the new items that we are doing with respect to changes within the company.
As I said, the company's been around since 1968, and we've made a lot of management changes, which we will discuss today. We have basically a new board, a new management team, and a new direction for this company. Antimony is a name that many people are not familiar with. It is on the critical minerals list. In fact, it's number one on the DOD's list. It is a hard rock material typically found many times with gold. It is a material that in the past has really been deemed kind of a junk metal in the sense that the price was so low, and it was just a bit of a pain for the gold mine placers as well as the miners. That has changed, and we'll talk about why that's changed so much. This is a listing of all the uses of antimony.
You can see in the military side, it's about 32% of the overall antimony use, but the industrial side is much greater, around 70%. That's really important because there are so many industrial needs for antimony that many people don't realize. Every car battery, a lead-based battery, has antimony in it, solar panels, roofing materials, ceramics, and glass. It goes on and on. On the military side, it's a very necessary ingredient. It's a hardy material for lead. It's used in its ignition system and primers, laser-guided missiles, any kind of heat or armor-piercing bullets, night vision cameras, binoculars, on and on. We continue to find more and more uses of antimony. It's used in drones as well. Let's go to our next slide, which gives a little more detail as to the antimony uses. We are the only domestic producer of finished products.
What that means is not only are we the only smelter in the United States and the only smelter in Mexico, we're the only two smelters in North America. We're the only two smelters in the Western Hemisphere. We do have a bit of a monopoly right now, and we're trying to grow this business significantly. We'll talk about that here in a bit. This next slide outlines the various markets. Antimony historically has been found in foreign sources. China was the biggest producer of antimony, along with Russia, Mexico, Bolivia, and Montenegro. We think that with the changes that have occurred over the past six months, we're in a very, very unique position to capitalize on what we have strategically. Let's jump now to page eight, which is in the executive order that came out called 14017.
What this order means is that any company that's securing critical minerals, of which antimony obviously is one, must begin by 2027 sourcing those minerals from US companies. A lot of domestic companies are getting their antimony from Europe or from other areas of the world. By 2027, if you're supplying the US military in any form or fashion, you've got to be sourcing from us. That has created an additional demand for our product that we did not anticipate. This is our next slide, our actual smelter located up in Thompson Falls, Montana. It has been there for 25 years. It has a capacity of a little over 300 tons a month. It's located up in the hills of Thompson Falls and is an area that we plan on expanding here in the near future, and we'll talk about that.
This is our smelter down in Madero, Mexico. It has been around about over 10 years. It has a capacity of about 200 tons a month. This smelter is actually firing back up here in about a week. We have material coming to this smelter from Australia, and we anticipate we've just hired, I think, a total of 15 new people that are getting ready to start. We just relined seven different furnaces on this facility. It has 17 total. Looking forward, anxiously forward to firing this back up. This is a little better description of the Madero facility. We're trying to, with some of the changes we're making, actually automize certain items that were previously done by hand and just do some sprucing up of this facility.
Our next slide is on page 12, and this is a really important slide from the standpoint is why is antimony so tight? There's no question that China is the answer. China made an announcement in the middle of September that they were cutting off all supplies of antimony to any country in the world, including the United States, and that has caused the price of antimony to dramatically increase, which is reflected here on page 13. Today, that number is more closer to $24 per pound. You can imagine that a product that's been around $5 to less than $5 per pound for 20-plus years, all of a sudden jumping to $24 a pound has created quite an excitement in the business. Let's jump to page 14. These are the various products that we make with antimony.
We make antimony oxide, metal trioxide, trichloride, trisulfide, and nanocrystals. We can do this at both different segments of our two plants, the one in Thompson Falls and the one in Madero. Now, another necessary ingredient for us to be able to do all the things we have planned is to be able to float material. What that means is taking a lower concentrate level of hard rock and making it a higher concentrate level. Because in order for us to make munitions-grade material, which we're already pre-qualified for by the Department of Defense out of our Thompson Falls facility, we must receive that material close to 70% concentrate.
This flotation facility that we have leased also in Montana, over in Phillipsburg, allows us to take not only antimony rock, but other kinds of critical minerals and float them to get them to higher concentrate levels. Now let's jump over to Alaska. Alaska is—let's see here if I get this wrong. I'm going right. Okay, yeah. Alaska is an area that we made a decision about, oh, probably a year ago. We went to the state of Alaska, met with the Geological Society, and asked where our antimony deposits that were discovered by other companies and left behind. We were given three kind of key areas. We've leased now close to 40,000 acres or over 50 sq mi of mineral leases in Alaska that we're in the process of permitting.
We anticipate bringing material from one of these sites to our Thompson Falls facility by the end of the Q2 of this year. That is by the end of June. That will enable our margins to significantly expand because instead of buying antimony, which we do today from third parties, we would be processing our own antimony product. This next slide here, slide 17, shows you the various critical minerals that we are currently involved in up in Alaska. I want to mention Ontario, Canada as well. This is an area that we have decided to lease for some cobalt opportunities. This area of Canada is really prime for this type of work. There is lots of infrastructure in place. We really are excited about this little play.
We'll probably bring in a partner at some point after we do some more geological work. This is a slide that shows the various critical minerals at this area of Sudbury District of Ontario. Why these slides are moving so slow. Sorry about that. Okay, let's go on to slide 20. This is the list of the various critical minerals that are on the DOD's critical mineral list. You can see on the left-hand side of the slide the ones that actually relate to our company. We're involved not only in antimony, but magnesium and nickel and zinc and tungsten and other minerals here on this slide. Okay. Jump to page 21. This is just a chart that shows you the activity of critical minerals in total, which have been on a pretty big jump.
Obviously, our president's very concerned about critical minerals having discussions with Ukraine as well as Greenland because of critical minerals. Let's jump now to our second line of business, which is Zeolite. Zeolite is a very friendly material. We have a mine up in Preston, Idaho, where we mine Zeolite. It is used in a lot of different products. I don't know why these slides are not moving. Sorry about that. This is not moving. The projector is not moving like it should be. Anyway, so Zeolite is a natural crystalline material that's used in lots of different products. We're very excited to be involved in this business. Just to give you an idea of the various businesses that buy our product, it's used for water treatment, agriculture, catalytic cracking, all kinds of petroleum refining, gas purification.
This mine is now running close to 97% efficiency based on changes we've made. A lot of people don't realize that also Zeolite was used in nuclear remediation. All three nuclear cleanups had Zeolite involved. We also have at this location in Preston, we have 25 employees. We just signed a new 10-year lease with the landowner. We drilled 82 test holes on this property at the beginning of last year to determine reserves. The reserve study is in the process of being completed. We know we have abundant reserves of the highest quality Zeolite of any mine we believe in the world. We are trying to use that expertise to really expand this business. Now that we know we have such a large reserve potential, we really want to grow our customer base.
We've actually hired two new salespeople, one in the water treatment area and one in the cattle area. They are out marketing at various conferences and shows and what have you. Let's talk a little bit about our accomplishments in 2024. Tons sold were up 8% just from the Q3. Sales volumes are up 18%. We only spent about $180,000. More importantly is our runtime. Well over 90%. Historically, this facility has only run in the 70% range. I want to talk about a new product we've launched called Cattle Prime. We're beginning to, instead of using middlemen all the time to sell our products, try to develop our own. This is one of our first. We have others that are planned. What is Zeolite used for? I mean, why do cattlemen like this material?
It really helps on the greenhouse gases in the first stomach. It also adds protein in the second, and it reduces significant smell of ammonia that's in cattle yards. I'm sure you've all smelled as you've driven by them. Cattlemen have really liked it. That's why 25% of our business is actually in the cattle feed area. Antimony and Zeolite are two products of this company. These are the summary of the recent accomplishments of the company. You can see all the changes. There's actually more than is even mentioned here. We doubled our monthly production of Zeolite last year. We're just now starting up our Mexican Madero smelter here in about a week. We've leased a bunch of claims up in Alaska. We've maintained a high cash balance. It's actually closer to $18 million at year-end. We're turning the company to profitability.
is going to be a big focus for us for 2025. This is the old financial statements. We will be reporting our new ones here in about 10 days. I know we have an audit committee meeting this week, and then we will be reporting them just probably the week after next. I will tell you that I did a look back of the company going back to when it first started, and the numbers we will be reporting for 2024 are record numbers. I am proud to say that. I anticipate that 2025 will have record numbers as well. Just to kind of give you a little bit of flavor to understand how fast this company is growing, in 2023, this company reported about $8.7 million of total revenues. I am anticipating that to be almost a double for 2024.
I'm not going to give any specific numbers yet, but it's between 14 and 15.5. A nice jump, and that was our record numbers. More importantly, when you start delving down into the cost of sales and gross profit, the margins, you'll see the dramatic change that has been made. I can tell you the Q1 is going to be off the charts. I'm anticipating Q1 numbers similar to full-year numbers. That's how fast this company is growing from the revenue, cash flow, EBITDA, and net income basis. We're having an outstanding period. A lot of non-believers out there. Numbers always fix those problems. We're looking forward to being in a position to report those numbers as soon as possible. What is our strategy going forward? We want to expand our antimony processing footprint.
We have, as I said, the only two smelters in North America. We are going to grow the total output of both of those smelters beginning in 2025, this year. We have new supplies coming, not only from Australia, from Canada, Mexico. We are working on contracts with other countries around the world to bring as much supply as possible into these facilities. As we get that supply, and then as we get our own product coming from Alaska, we will feel much more comfortable in the expansion plans that we have for this year. On the Zeolite side, no doubt, we are hitting records every week on sales as I start looking at them in the first two months of 2025. We may have new salesmen, and no question that business will grow nicely as well. We also have some acquisitions that we continue to look at.
We probably looked at three last year. None of those worked out. We're very, very picky. We're not going to do anything to dilute our shareholders in any kind of meaningful manner. This is just a summary of what the company has done. Stock price is down a bit now, but that's just a short aberration. It's important to know that we have virtually no debt, $229,000 on one truck at 2% interest rate. We have $18 million in cash approximately, plus or minus. We have a $100 million universal shelf registration statement, and we have a $25 million ATM. We're very well positioned. I'm asked all the time by institutions, "Do I want to raise money?" The answer is no. I don't need to raise any money. We've been marketing the company for about six, seven months now.
You can see all the publications that have come out, both live interviews as well as publications you recognize. We do have two equity research reports out on us from different firms being HC Wainwright and Alliance Global. We anticipate more coming. I think a number of firms are waiting to see our year-end numbers, which we're anxious to report here again in about a week to 10 days. That is the end of my presentation. I'd be happy to open up the floor to questions that may come. Okay, Lee Ask, the first question here. What do you expect? When do you expect to get antimony from Alaska, and when will revenues be booked? I'm taking a little bit more conservative route than hired geologists. They're telling me sometime in the Q2. I'm saying the end of the Q2, the first of the Q3.
I would not anticipate any revenues from Alaska in the Q2, but I'm hopeful that we'll have some nice revenues report in the Q3 of this year. We're working right now on logistics for trucking. As you know, all that material has to come from Alaska to Montana. We're going to be getting a lot of bids from various truck hauling companies. We do know that most trucks that come from Alaska to the United States are imported. That should be a positive for us. We're going to try to use that to our advantage, obviously, to get the most reduced trucking opportunities. Okay. Next question. Will you be able to procure enough raw antimony to have the U.S. and Mexico facilities running at 100% capacity? And if you get DOD funding to expand your U.S.
facility by four times, have enough raw antimony to run at 100%, not only today, but when the facility expanded four times? Okay. Great question. One of our biggest jobs every day is finding antimony supply. We have done that. We have actually three containers on the water coming from Australia right now. First arrives on the 10th of March. The answer is yes. There's no doubt we can fill our facilities within the next few months. The next question is, if you expand your facility in Thompson Falls by four times, I think you should be looking at that more as a two times than a four times just because of the footprint we have. We're going to have to find possibly a new location in town if we try to go much bigger.
We think that with our existing equipment, we can get probably double what we're doing now, and hopefully another doubling of that. The Madero site in Mexico is quite different. We have a much larger footprint there. Depending on supplies and where they come from will help us determine how we're going to do those expansion efforts. We're obviously still waiting to hear from the DOD. We're in a quiet period with them. Hopefully, we'll have something to report in the next month or two about the DOD grants requested. Okay. What is the timeline to mine your own raw antimony instead of purchasing as you do today? Again, we are purchasing all our antimony today. Just so everybody knows, there is no antimony being mined in the United States or Canada today that we're aware of.
We've been all over the United States and Canada and Alaska looking at this. There's a lot of talk about companies wanting to mine antimony, but we're not aware of any supply coming from Canada or the United States today. We believe that our mining in Alaska here in the next three months will be the very first antimony supply commercially mined in either the United States or Canada in the last number of years. I mean, years ago, that was not the case, but as of today, that is the case. I think I've already explained our timeline is probably the second, Q3 of 2025 to have our own material coming to Thompson Falls. We will not take that material to Mexico. Mexico will always likely be purchasing antimony from other parties. What are your expectations for DOD funding antimony operations?
If UAMY receives this funding, what specifically would the company do, Thompson Falls, Alaska? We have made our two white papers. We have done all the work. DOD has visited all our sites, both Thompson Falls, Alaska, and we are in a quiet period. I really cannot say I know more than I can say, but we are very encouraged about the process that we are under. Obviously, there have been tons of changes by this administration in all kinds of funding, and that may or may not affect us. We do not know. We feel encouraged based on those conversations that something will be forthcoming. When that is officially announced, if it is announced, we will give you some greater details. As the discussions in the white papers outlined, we are looking for funding both for Thompson Falls and Alaska. I do not see that really changing in that regard.
Anyway, when we can talk about it, we'll be happy to talk about it. Can you please repeat the projection numbers? I didn't really give you much, but I'll give you a little boilerplate. As I said, the company in 2023 did about $8.7 million in revenues. We anticipate the numbers that we'll be reporting here in a week or so will be almost double that in the $14-$15.5 million range. Those are record numbers, by the way. As I said, I went back and checked. Numbers with respect to 2025 are on explosive growth. I've only seen January, which I'm not going to give you, but I will tell you I was blown away. I know February is better than January, and I know March will be better than February.
We're on track to do, in the Q1, numbers that would be similar to prior year's full-year numbers. That gives you any kind of indication of the growth that we're seeing. It's really exponential. I just see that getting better and better as the year goes by because I'll have more material in both facilities. We have a higher price in both facilities, and then we'll be mining our own product by the second, Q3 of this year, which will give us greater margins. All of those going together, and then you start expanding those facilities, and all of a sudden, the numbers get pretty amazing. I've always been a big believer of under-promising and over-performing.
I'm not going to give you any specifics, but we will likely have numbers after the Q1 that we can maybe give you some projections for 2025, which we've never done before. Do you anticipate any other smelting capacity coming online in North America? What is a barrier for others to come on board? I get asked that question all the time and wonder about it all the time. It's very, very difficult to get a permit for one of these smelters. It's also very time-consuming. I keep telling people what our management team that has stuck with us during these management changes has proven is that there is a lot more art to making antimony products than it is science. I'm really in awe of some of these guys' expertise and how they know to tweak this and tweak that.
Because you got to remember, when we receive samples of antimony material from all over the world, there's all kinds of different metallurgical aspects of that material. We have to. Is there too much lead, too much silver, too much gold even? I mean, is there high sulfur content? There are a lot of things that go into making a decision of whether we can take somebody's material or not. Of course, we learn a lot too about where the best material is around the world. Being, again, the only guys around, I mean, why would we be receiving material from Australia if there was a smelter in Australia? There's no way. Why would we be negotiating material from Bolivia, halfway across the world, or from Chad, or from Turkey if there wasn't capacity?
The real bottleneck in the antimony business today is what we're filling. We truly have a bit of a monopoly right now. We want to grow that business. We anticipate that we can be a really formidable competitor in this business on a worldwide basis, not just North America. That's what's got us excited. Okay. I think that's all the questions I have. I'm refreshing one more time. Oh, here we go. How does the cartel impact Mexican operations? Absolutely zero. We're in an area where there is no cartel activity. We're near a nice-sized town. We're kind of out in the desert on our own and have had zero issues. The issues we had prior to this past year was when we were actually mining in Mexico and up in the mountains and the hills.
That's where we were having significant problems with the cartels, not anywhere near our operations at Madero. Can you explain what the DOD wants to do with you guys? They want to do a couple of things. They want additional antimony supply, and they want additional antimony smelting capacity. Those are the things the DOD wants because they were previously getting those materials from China. That's what we're in a position to provide. Do you have plans to manufacture synthetic Zeolites? Not at this time. We know that we have such a huge supply of Zeolite. As I said, over 200-year supply. It's the highest quality, and there's really no reason to even look at synthetics when we have this kind of quality material that's so low price. We can beat the hands-off synthetic Zeolite pretty easily.
Trump said, "Take historic action to dramatically expand production of critical minerals and rare earths here in the USA." Have you heard what this might be? There's a lot of critical minerals that we need. I mean, another one that we're actively looking at strongly is tungsten. I think there's no doubt that we're trying to bring lots of things back to the USA. We're perfectly suited to have kept the smelter alive during the downturn to be able to reap the benefits we're getting today. I think there's a different view. I was just at PDAC up in Toronto this past week, and the excitement about the mining industry and the reluctance of mining, I think, has died down some. I think you're going to see state agencies really picking up their permitting.
I've been doing some lobbying efforts in D.C. with senators and congressmen from Alaska, Montana, Idaho, and the feedback has been extremely positive. They want us to be able to expand and meet the critical mineral needs of the U.S. We are trying to do everything we can to accomplish that. I think we're in a very, very unique position. When we talk to all these other antimony wannabe producers, they're two, three, five, eight years away. We are today. We're doing this right now. It's not six months from now. It's not a year from now. It's today. That is what makes us so different, and that is what you'll see as we're able to report these increased numbers. Would you consider manufacturing synthetic Zeolites? No, not at this time. We're too focused on selling our own Zeolite.
What is your comment on Trump wanting to create a smelter on Pentagon bases? At this point, talk. I'd like to know who's going to build that smelter, hopefully us. That's all the questions I have. Looks like I've also kind of gone over my time here. I thank you very much for your participation and listening in today, and look forward to some exciting times ahead. Thank you.
Thank you very much. That concludes the US Antimony's presentation. You may now disconnect. For details on upcoming presentations, please refer to the conference agenda. Thank you for your participation, and we look forward to welcoming you to the next session.