Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Day 1 of the Sidoti Small Cap Conference. My name is Ashisha, and I'm an analyst here at Sidoti. With me today, I have United States Antimony Corporation. It trades under the ticker UAMY. I'm happy to welcome Gary Evans, the CEO of the company, and Jonathan, the head of IR. We have about 30 minutes today, including the Q&A. If you have any questions, please submit them at the Q&A section at the bottom of your screen. With that, I will let you take over, Gary.
Thank you very much, and thank everyone for joining the presentation today. We are a New York Stock Exchange-listed company, traded since 2012. This is an old company. It's been around since 2000, actually 1968, when the company was founded. This screen here that we put together just kind of shows you in red all the changes we've made since new management, new board, new direction of the company occurred, beginning really about a year ago, a year and a half ago. We have got, I don't know how many different new management members. Most of our board is changed. With the antimony changes that have occurred in the market, we have made a lot of changes within the company. We'll talk about that today. Next slide. What is antimony?
It's a critical mineral, actually number one on the DOD list, that's used in lots of different businesses. In fact, we have 16 industrial customers that use antimony, and about over half of those supply products to our military. It is also in the military. It's used as a hardy material for lead. It's used in armor-piercing bullets. These are an example of all the different things that antimony can be used for. We also sell into the flame retardant market. It's used in solar panels and lots of ceramics and glasses. We have been approved by the Department of Defense to make munitions-grade material. We have the only antimony smelter in the United States, as well as the only antimony smelter in Mexico. We have a small portion of the domestic market that is growing rapidly, and we'll talk a little bit more about that today.
Antimony has typically been controlled by China, and they actually control over 85% of the end market. Countries like Mexico, Russia, and Serbia have been big contributors of antimony. There is no antimony being mined today in the United States. All the antimony mines have been shut down. Let's go to the next slide. There was a critical minerals initiative by our government that says Executive Order 14017, that says basically all the companies that are buying antimony need to start getting it from U.S. sources by 2027. That has created an additional demand on products that we make and is obviously assisting our company. Next slide. This is our smelter up in Thompson Falls, Montana. It's been operational about 20 years. Again, the only operating smelter in the United States. We currently receive material mostly from Canada into this smelter.
We, again, are approved here for making munitions-grade material. It can handle a couple hundred tons a month. Next slide. This is our smelter in Madero, Mexico. We actually shut it down about a year ago because we were using mines that we owned in Mexico that were not economic. We are firing this thing back up next week. We did, over the last 45 days, about $500,000 of improvements. We fixed seven furnaces, which is basically we redid the inside of those furnaces. That material coming into Madero today is coming from Australia. Also, we have some material coming from the country of Mexico. We are working on some new contracts with two other countries as well. Another piece of the element for a midstream, downstream operation in antimony is having the ability to float.
This is a contact mill located also in Montana that we have leased that can take all kinds of—I missed that. I'm off a slide. This is the Madero facility I mentioned down in Mexico. This just gives you some further information about it. We can handle up to 200 tons a month, and we hope to be doing that over the next few months here. Our first container load of material arrived about a week ago in Mexico. Again, we will start processing that material next week. Why is antimony so tight? That's China, China, China, China. They cut off all supply to any country in the world, including the United States, including our Department of Defense. That's created a significant shortage in the material.
That has caused our phone to ring off the hooks for companies trying to bring raw antimony ore to us. That is why, again, we fired up the Madero facility. This is the average price of antimony. It is actually a little higher than that today. It is over $25 a pound and has seen basically almost a five-times increase in price over the last eight months. It is the best-performing critical mineral of all critical minerals. We believe that this, we see no really end in sight. We actually hope it does not go up much more, but it keeps going up almost every day. These are all the different types of antimony end products that we make: oxide, metal, trioxide, trichloride, trisulfide, and nanocrystals. We have the ability, both our Madero and Thompson Falls, to do these various products.
Okay, this is the flotation facility I got off track on a minute ago. This is the one that's located also in Montana. What does a mill like this do? It takes the lower-grade concentrate that might be 5%, 10%, 20% and brings it up to a higher-grade concentrate that we can process in Thompson Falls, Montana. What does that mean? We have to have basically 70% antimony concentrate to make munitions-grade material. What that flotation mill does is help us achieve that goal. We made a decision about a year ago that we didn't want to just completely depend on other countries for our supply. As I mentioned, we're getting supply from Canada and Mexico and Australia and two other countries that we're going to be announcing soon.
We decided, you know, there was a lot of antimony in the state of Alaska. We went up there last summer, spent some time with the Geological Society, asked them, "Hey, where should we go lease?" They showed us all the stockpiles of antimony that were left by other miners in the state. We have leased that acreage, and we have operations ongoing. We have permits being filed, and we anticipate mining up there in the second quarter and bringing material to our facility in Montana in the third quarter of this year. This will obviously give us some significant improvements to our cash flow because instead of buying the antimony, it may be 40-50% of Rotterdam will be processing our own antimony. This is a reflection of our claims. We have other critical minerals other than antimony involved here, as you can see.
This area is really between Fairbanks and Anchorage, Alaska. Next slide. We also have some claims up in Canada we took last year. This is a cobalt play. We are doing some work on this play, some geological work. We'll probably do some test drilling there soon. We will likely find a partner at some point once we kind of prove up what we believe is there. The beauty of this location is it's in an area where there's a ton of infrastructure already in place. That is a combination of flotation and smelting capabilities. We're pretty excited about this play. It's looking real well. This is just a map showing you where the Sudbury District is and where our Ontario, Canada play exists.
These are the various critical minerals on the left-hand side of this chart that the Department of Defense has identified. That is on the right-hand side, the 17 different ones. On the left-hand side is our critical minerals, and then the ones we are involved in that are non-critical at the very bottom. We are beginning to expand our portfolio from just antimony and cobalt. We have a tungsten play we are working on as well. We do want to diversify the company a bit, but antimony is our main focus. This is just a chart showing you what has happened with critical minerals over the last number of years. You can see that the whole gamut of critical minerals around the world, the prices have continued to increase because demand is there, and it has been difficult to mine these products. We basically are running out to some extent.
I keep being asked all the time about synthetic antimony. We have put this slide together to show that we are really not too worried about it. It is unreliable and ineffective. Most of it comes from India. We know from our discussion with the Department of Defense that they are not very happy with it at all. It is very expensive, much more expensive than antimony ore, and just does not perform nearly like antimony. We are asked all the time, "Well, what is going to replace antimony?" We do not have an answer. We do not know what can replace antimony. It is not a big ingredient, but it is a necessary ingredient for a lot of different industries. Next slide. This is another part of our business called zeolite. This is a mine that we control up in Preston, Idaho.
Zeolite is a material you may have never heard of, but it's used in lots of different products. It's a very human and family or animal-friendly material. It's used in all these different areas of water treatment and agricultural, gas purification. I think over 25% of our business goes into cattle. This is what the mine looks like over there. This is a nuclear reactor. The Three Mile Island and Chernobyl and Fukushima all use zeolite in their cleanup of those. We have been talking to the federal government and the EPA about possibly stockpiling zeolite. We know that we have the highest quality zeolite of any mine in the world based on our analysis of other zeolite deposits. We also know we have a huge supply, probably 100-200 year supply.
We are very excited about this business, and we continue to grow it annually. This is just kind of a map of the state of Idaho. You can see up in the hills our mining operation. We have about 25 employees up there. 2024 was a turnaround year for us here. At the end of the year, running at about 98% efficiency. We continue to expand our position in this business. We just hired two salespeople here in the last couple of months, one in water treatment and one in cattle. These are kind of accomplishments we have made. I will be updating this with our numbers that we will be reporting tomorrow. They continue to look better and better. This is a new product line. We decided to establish some of our own retail product lines rather than just use intermediaries or middlemen.
This is a direct-to-consumer line for cattle called CattlePrime . You ask, "What does zeolite do for a cow?" It has a number of nice qualities. For one, zeolite will take out the ammonia that is in the feedlots and the cattle yards. You have probably smelt as you have driven by those in your life. It also takes out some of the greenhouse gases that a cow emits, which has been an issue with the EPA, and then adds protein in the second stomach of this cow. A lot of feedlots like to mix zeolite into their cattle feed to improve the beef with respect to prior to slaughter. Accomplishments, there is actually more than this now. We have added more people. We have really built up the management team of this company to take this to the next level. We are experiencing that today.
We've also had a number of board member changes and just really taken a company that was a bit sleepy, tired, and really rejuvenated it at a time when its primary product has increased five times in value. This is our last reported numbers. Again, we'll be reporting our year-end in Form 10-K tomorrow. We have a conference call tomorrow afternoon. I would like you to listen in to that call if you can. What's our forward strategy, our plan? We have actually applied to the DOD for some government grants. We're in kind of a quiet period on that, waiting on that to occur. We plan to continue expanding the operations of our properties both in Montana and Mexico on antimony as well as our zeolite mine up in Idaho. Really, you know, three things. Prices have definitely improved our business.
Volumes are improving our business. Supply of product from other countries as well as anticipated supply of our own antimony from Alaska. Lots of changes going on. We do have some other critical minerals we're looking at hard. We plan on continuing to grow this enterprise. Next slide. We do look at acquisitions all the time. I've got a couple I'm looking at right now. We haven't done any yet. We're very, very selective. We're not going to do anything to dilute our shareholders in a material manner because we believe that the upside is already existing, inherent inside the company. This is kind of a summary of our company today. We have a market cap right around $200 million. We have today about $18 million of cash on the balance sheet. We have virtually no long-term debt.
We do have a $100 million universal shelf registration statement outstanding, as well as a $25 million ATM with Alliance Global. We are not in the need to go raising any capital yet. We are hopeful that the DOD will help us with some grants. We are in a quiet period now. We will just wait to see what happens there. We look forward to a real prosperous 2025. These are all the recent publications. We have been getting a lot of attention, as you can imagine, because of the business we are in. We did pick up a couple of firms that own coverage, research coverage. Those are listed at the bottom, being Alliance Global and H.C. Wainwright . I think there will be some other firms coming. We are in the news quite a bit. I do an interview almost once a week.
Great. Thank you so much, Gary, for the presentation. I would request everybody in the audience, if you have any questions, please submit them at the Q&A section at the bottom of your screen. Gary, I would like to start with one of my questions. The stock price has increased about 500% in the last one year. Can you just go over what are the major announcements that you made that have happened?
Yeah, it's really not necessarily any major announcements. It's been that we started marketing. Jonathan, who's on the call, that will take some answered questions as well, has been with me about eight months. And the company, even though it had been traded since 2012 on the NYSE, had never really marketed. We went to a lot of conferences last year, started telling the story. This year, we're focused more on the institutional side of the business rather than retail, picking up research coverage, getting in all these publications and news, being on TV, what have you. Just exposure. It's really nobody knew us. The governors of the states we operate in, in Montana, Alaska, and Idaho, didn't even know we existed. The congressmen didn't know we existed.
It has been an educational process of telling the world, "This is who we are, and this is what we're doing.
Right. Are there any strategic benefits of having your smelter in Montana and similarly for Mexico as well? Do you have any benefits in operating those plants over there?
Mexico, as you know, our new president is trying to change some of the EPA rules because one of the things that's restricted a lot of mining companies is very tough permitting environmental laws that don't allow miners to do what they do. Mexico has more lenient laws and allows us to do things we can't do here in the United States. I think that will change. Alaska is very pro-mining. The permitting process is much faster than other areas. We don't tend to get involved in any kind of federal lands, BLM, Forestry Service, Fish and Game, tribal lands. We try to stay either on private lands or on state lands where we know we can get permits approved. We have tried to stay away from those long bureaucratic processes that have historically really slowed down a lot of mining companies.
Right. Do you think the tensions between Canada and the U.S. due to tariffs and the president could affect your hopeful mining operations in Canada?
We're involved in critical minerals is a big positive. The fact that the material we get from Canada originates in Alaska is a very positive factor. We've actually been to Washington over the last month doing some lobbying efforts with our congressmen and trying to see if we can get waivers. At this point, we are not affected, but we want to be ahead of the game. We're all hopeful that these tariffs get resolved. I do think they'll be reduced substantially. We're not anticipating any effect on us.
Okay. Can you discuss your tungsten opportunity? Is tungsten more or less important than antimony to the DOD?
Yeah, tungsten's another one of the critical minerals we haven't. We've got some tungsten activity up in Alaska. We have some in the U.S., continental U.S. as well. We haven't announced much of that yet because we're still negotiating certain items. We see that as a great opportunity as another area to grow into. This is a nice critical mineral. It hasn't had the run-up that antimony's had, but we anticipate that could possibly occur down the road.
Right. Can you just give us the revenue mix between zeolite and antimony right now?
Yes. Today, when you look at the 2024 financials tomorrow, it'll be about 30% zeolite, 70% antimony. That will probably reduce in 2025 because antimony is taking off so much. I would say it'd be more like a 10-15% contributor of our revenue. We're trying to grow the zeolite business as well. We are growing it, but it's not growing as fast as the antimony.
Got it. What is the difference between $500,000 per ton price versus $25 per pound? Can you just explain the difference?
I'm sorry. I didn't understand the question.
It's a question from the audience, which is asking, what is the $50,000 per ton price versus the $25 per pound? Can you explain the difference?
Divide pounds into tons. It's just a mathematical calculation.
Okay. Okay. Can you talk a little bit about the competition you have in North America? Yeah, there is another company listed, which is Nova, which has a mine in Alaska and arranged for producing antimony and getting DOD subsidy.
Many of the other companies that are our competitors in Alaska for antimony, many of which are Australian junior miners, are either way too far from roads or in areas where actually mining the antimony is going to take years. I call ourselves kind of the garbage dealers of Alaska. We're actually out picking up mining claims where we can get the antimony right off the ground. It's already there. It's already stored. It was left by other mining companies that did not want it. Antimony years ago had very little value, had sulfur, arsenic associated with it. That caused companies to try to stay away from it. The state of Alaska is loving what we're doing because we're actually cleaning up the environment. We're picking up antimony sitting on the ground.
Some areas we might have to use an excavator and go a foot under the ground to get the antimony deposits we're looking for. It is a total different type of mining operation than a typical gold miner that has antimony associated with it. Those are huge investments, lots of permitting, big time frames to get to. We are in a total different sector of the antimony business. We are cleaning up other miners' antimony that's been left.
Right. Do you anticipate making your current smelter larger with the DOD subsidy or making a new one in a central base?
It just depends. We know we can grow our footprint in Mexico without a problem. We would probably fund that ourselves. The Montana facility, we're getting much more efficient. In fact, we just refitted a furnace that went live a week ago. We have four active furnaces there now. We can grow our throughput to a certain extent. The problem we have in Montana is the footprint of the land. In other words, there's just not enough land to do what we want to do. We are looking at other locations around the country that have got permitting already where we can move quickly. That might be another opportunity. We have not made that decision yet. We know we can grow in Mexico and Montana enough in 2025 to meet the needs.
Right. For that, you do not need to add any capital, right? You do not need to generate any more capital.
Just fixed us seven furnaces in Mexico, and we spent $500,000. Pretty cheap.
Okay. One of the questions is, does the fact that those antimony deposits have been sitting on the surface affect the quality or purity of the ore specifically?
Actually, the quality of the ore we're finding to be some of the highest quality of ore we've seen from any of the international sources. That gives us encouragement that we can move that to Montana. I mean, we're talking 35%-40% antimony concentrate, which is a lot of the stuff we're getting from other places is 10%, 15%, 20%. It is a higher concentrate antimony that we're finding in Alaska.
Got it. Yeah, just as one of my final questions, what are the things that you're looking for in 2025 that the investor should be looking at, more like any near-term milestones that you have?
I think the real highlight for 2025 will be our growth in revenues, cash flow, and EBITDA. That's coming from new material, expanded operations, and prices. We're really hitting on all three fronts of getting more material from different countries, bringing our own material in from Alaska, the higher prices. Remember, these prices took off really November, December. We didn't really see that much in 2024. We're seeing it big time in 2025. Just to give you an idea, when we report our revenues tomorrow, we're anticipating revenues in 2025 in the $30 million-$60 million range. It's a big, big jump from where we were last year. If we can do the things we're going to do, it'll be even better than that. We're hopeful.
It's hard to throw a dart at the wall and say, "Okay, this is where we'll be," because we have so many moving parts going on, but all the parts are moving in the right direction.
Got it. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for taking the time and speaking with us, Gary, today.
Thank you.
We really appreciate it. For everybody in the audience, thank you for taking the time. Have a nice day.
Have a good day.