Comstock Mining Inc. (NYSE: LODE) (“Comstock” and the “Company”)
today announced that its executive chairman and chief executive
officer issued the following shareholder letter.
Dear Shareholders:
On behalf of our Board of Directors, our
employees, and partners, we thank each of you for participating in
a pivotal year for Comstock, in which we completed a series of
strategic transactions that acquired intellectual property,
management, employees, and the facilities needed to transform our
business and establish a platform of breakthrough renewable energy
products. We have aligned on a precise goal, and we are eager to
summarize our business plans and our outlook for you, here and
now.
The Comstock
The Comstock Lode is one of world’s most
important mineral discoveries. It has a rich history, steeped in
grit and innovation. Its pioneers innovated new technologies and
mined over $20 billion in gold and silver (in today’s dollars),
infusing extraordinary wealth into America’s burgeoning economy at
the dawn of the industrial revolution. We have been proud to
inherit and contribute to that legacy throughout our own history,
as we enabled an unprecedented consolidation and operation of the
historic Comstock Lode mining district, including 10-square miles
of land with many miles of known mineral claims and exploration
targets. We mined and produced about 60,000 ounces of gold and
735,000 ounces of silver from just one of those targets between
2012 and 2016. We believe that far more remains, a bonanza with
billions of dollars of gold and silver, unavailable to the
century-old mining practices of our predecessors. Our strategic
partners are working to unlock that value.
Accordingly, we shifted our focus during 2020
and 2021 to new investments in renewable energy, where we have
differentiated technology and core competencies, while monetizing
our non-strategic assets. Our objectives are to maximize the value
from our mineral estate while introducing breakthrough,
decarbonizing lines of business with the capacity for rapid
growth.
Enabling Systemic Decarbonization –
Cellulosic Fuels
Renewable fuels provide a critical pathway for
decarbonization, however, most current forms of renewable fuel draw
from the same pool of conventional feedstocks, including corn and
various vegetable oils in the U.S., and the entire universe of
those feedstocks only represents a tiny fraction of the global
motor fuel burn. Further, the lifecycle carbon benefits of growing,
harvesting, and using conventional feedstocks are extremely
limited, even in comparison to fossil fuels. Any plan to
meaningfully decarbonize using renewable fuels must involve
abundant and available feedstocks that no one else is using
today.
Our renewable fuels division, Comstock Fuels,
acquired a portfolio of pioneering technologies that resolve
conventional feedstock limitations by efficiently converting
wasted, unused, widely available, and rapidly
replenishable woody biomass into advanced cellulosic
fuels. These technologies unlock vast quantities of historically
unused and underutilized feedstocks with enough renewable carbon to
permanently offset billions of tons of fossil fuel emissions.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy,
America can produce upwards of one billion tons per year
of biomass feedstock for renewable fuels. That’s enough to produce
1.7 billion barrels of carbon neutral fuels with our technologies,
or more than a third of the U.S. transportation demand. In
addition, more than 27% of American soil, or about 540 million
acres, is comprised of forestland that was previously more than
twice as large, before being clear cut for less productive uses.
Those under-utilized resources could be restored and used to
sustainably grow, harvest, and replant billions of tons of
fast-growing trees and energy crops for conversion into billions of
barrels of renewable fuels with our technologies. The combined
output could exceed 50% of America’s current annual output of
fossil crude, and it’s 100% renewable. Canada has even more.
It’s the equivalent of an oil well that will never run dry,
a bonanza hidden in plain sight, and our technologies are
effectively the drill.
Enabling Systemic Decarbonization –
Electrification Products
Electrification and continued advancements in
energy storage are vitally necessary to reduce reliance on fossil
fuels while shifting to and increasing use of renewable fuels. Our
90% owned lithium-ion battery (“LIB”) recycling business, LiNiCo
Corporation (“LiNiCo”), holds the rights to a portfolio of
innovative processes that efficiently crush and separate LIBs,
extract lithium, nickel, cobalt, and graphite, and reuse the
recovered metals to produce 99% pure cathode active precursor
products. Collectively, these technologies give LiNiCo, and its
existing 137,000 square foot battery metal recycling facility,
differentiating competitive advantages, including the ability to
process upwards of 100,000 tons of LIB and related feedstocks per
year into an array of electrification products, including lithium,
nickel, cobalt, graphite, and cathode materials.
According to International Energy
Agency (“IEA”), there were more than 10 million electric
vehicles (“EVs”) on the road in 2020, with new EV registrations
increasing by 41% over 2019 and another 140% during the first
quarter of 2021. Meeting the increased EV demand is estimated to
require about five times more lithium carbonate
equivalent (“LCE”) than the entire lithium mining industry produces
today. Miners and manufacturers can scale up to meet that demand,
however, according to a January 2021 USGS mineral commodity
summary, there are only about 86 million tons of
identified lithium reserves worldwide, and LIBs are typically
landfilled after eight to ten years of use. Our
technologies meet the realities of that demand by enabling
profitability at the earliest stages of production, thereby
positioning our LIB recycling business to contribute billions to
our enterprise value from LiNiCo based on existing valuations of
comparable public companies.
Our Outlook – A Net Zero Carbon
World
This is our new platform for growth. We will
innovate and commercialize technologies that contribute to global
decarbonization and net zero circularity by efficiently converting
natural resources, including wasted and unused materials, into
valuable renewable energy products that shift supply chains away
from and reduce reliance on fossil fuels. We will also lead and
support the adoption and growth of a balanced net zero ecosystem
based on the feedstocks unlocked by our technologies, with powerful
embedded economic incentives for our clients, their industries, and
the populations they serve to decarbonize.
We will rapidly achieve exponential growth and
extraordinary financial, natural, and social gains by building,
owning, and operating a fleet of advanced carbon neutral extraction
and refining facilities, by selling an array of complimentary
process solutions and related services, and by licensing selected
technologies to qualified strategic partners. Our goal is
to generate over $16 billion in revenue on an annualized basis by
2030, by producing and selling renewable energy products that
enable us, our clients, and their downstream stakeholders to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions by at least 100 million metric tons per
year. Meeting that objective would offset more than 234
million barrels per year of fossil fuel, or about 6% of the U.S.
transportation burn, and require an estimated 8% of the existing
biomass residues produced annually in the U.S.
Such scales are achievable by tapping into and
leveraging existing infrastructure. Our expanded team has extensive
experience in the renewable fuels industry, having designed and
built several dozen renewable fuel production facilities in the
U.S. Notably, our team invented and commercialized pioneering
processes used by more than 95% of the U.S. corn ethanol industry
to produce distillers corn oil, a value-added feedstock that
offsets more than 20 million barrels of fossil fuel per year and
has played a disruptive role in the growth and development of the
renewable fuels industry.
We have already made remarkable progress. We are
currently building commercial pilot scale cellulosic fuels and LIB
facilities, and we are preparing to commence operations at our
full-scale LIB recycling facility later this year. We have also
made significant strides in developing and establishing our new
facilities and forging new revenue and licensing streams that we
will soon share. We have also made meaningful progress and will
complete the monetization of our non-strategic assets, as quickly
as possible, while funding our new businesses and limiting our
focus to the objectives outlined above.
The Comstock Lode’s history of relentless grit
and innovation and pioneering and prospecting against all odds will
always be part of our identity. Moving forward, we will drop the
word “mining” from our name and rebrand the company as “Comstock”
to reflect our new mission of enabling systemic decarbonization.
Additional information in that regard will be made available in the
coming weeks as we launch our new website and file our Form 10-K
for our fiscal year ended December 31, 2021.
We look forward to our next communication and
seeing those of you that can attend this year’s Annual General
Meeting, on May 26, 2022, where we plan on showcasing our renewable
energy businesses, employees, and partners, including the results
of our business plans, schedules, and near-term revenues. Until
then, thank you for your continued interest and support.
Kindest regards,Corrado De GasperisExecutive
Chairman and Chief Executive OfficerComstock Mining Inc.
About Comstock Mining Inc.
Comstock Mining Inc. (NYSE: LODE) innovates
technologies that contribute to global decarbonization and
circularity by shifting the consumption patterns of industries and
populations. The Company’s technologies are designed to do so by
efficiently converting wasted and unused natural resources into
valuable renewable energy products, which the Company intends to
use to achieve exponential growth and extraordinary financial,
natural, and social gains by building, owning, and operating a
fleet of advanced carbon neutral natural resource extraction and
refining facilities, by selling an array of complementary process
solutions and related services, and by licensing selected
technologies to qualified strategic partners. To learn more, please
visit www.comstockmining.com.
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release and any related calls or
discussions may include forward-looking statements within the
meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended,
and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended.
All statements, other than statements of historical facts, are
forward-looking statements. The words “believe,” “expect,”
“anticipate,” “estimate,” “project,” “plan,” “should,” “intend,”
“may,” “will,” “would,” “potential” and similar expressions
identify forward-looking statements, but are not the exclusive
means of doing so. Forward-looking statements include statements
about matters such as: future industry market conditions; future
explorations or acquisitions; future changes in our exploration
activities; future changes in our research and development; future
prices and sales of, and demand for, our products and services;
land entitlements and uses; permits; production capacity and
operations; operating and overhead costs; future capital
expenditures and their impact on us; operational and management
changes (including changes in the Board of Directors); changes in
business strategies, planning and tactics; future employment and
contributions of personnel, including consultants; future land
sales; investments, acquisitions, joint ventures, strategic
alliances, business combinations, operational, tax, financial and
restructuring initiatives, including the nature, timing and
accounting for restructuring charges, derivative assets and
liabilities and the impact thereof; contingencies; litigation,
administrative or arbitration proceedings; environmental compliance
and changes in the regulatory environment; offerings, limitations
on sales or offering of equity or debt securities, including asset
sales and associated costs; and future working capital, costs,
revenues, business opportunities, debt levels, cash flows, margins,
taxes, earnings and growth. These statements are based on
assumptions and assessments made by our management in light of
their experience and their perception of historical and current
trends, current conditions, possible future developments and other
factors they believe to be appropriate. Forward-looking statements
are not guarantees, representations or warranties and are subject
to risks and uncertainties, many of which are unforeseeable and
beyond our control and could cause actual results, developments and
business decisions to differ materially from those contemplated by
such forward-looking statements. Some of those risks and
uncertainties include the risk factors set forth in reports that we
file with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including Item
1A, “Risk Factors” in our most recently-filed Annual Report on Form
10-K and/or Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, and the following:
adverse effects of climate changes or natural disasters; adverse
effects of global or regional pandemic disease spread or other
crises; global economic and capital market uncertainties; the
speculative nature of gold or mineral exploration, mercury
remediation and lithium, nickel and cobalt recycling, including
risks of diminishing quantities or grades of qualified resources;
operational or technical difficulties in connection with
exploration or mercury remediation, metal recycling, processing or
mining activities; costs, hazards and uncertainties associated with
precious metal based activities, including environmentally friendly
and economically enhancing clean mining and processing
technologies, precious metal exploration, resource development,
economic feasibility assessment and cash generating mineral
production; costs, hazards and uncertainties associated with
mercury remediation, metal recycling, processing or mining
activities; contests over our title to properties; potential
dilution to our stockholders from our stock issuances,
recapitalization and balance sheet restructuring activities;
potential inability to comply with applicable government
regulations or law; adoption of or changes in legislation or
regulations adversely affecting our businesses; permitting
constraints or delays; ability to achieve the benefits of business
opportunities that may be presented to, or pursued by, us,
including those involving battery technology, mercury remediation
technology and efficacy, quantum computing and advanced materials
development, and development of cellulosic technology in bio-fuels
and related carbon-based material production; ability to
successfully identify, finance, complete and integrate
acquisitions, joint ventures, strategic alliances, business
combinations, asset sales, and investments that we may be party to
in the future; changes in the United States or other monetary or
fiscal policies or regulations; interruptions in our production
capabilities due to capital constraints; equipment failures;
fluctuation of prices for gold or certain other commodities (such
as silver, zinc, lithium, nickel, cobalt, cyanide, water, diesel,
gasoline and alternative fuels and electricity); changes in
generally accepted accounting principles; adverse effects of war,
mass shooting, terrorism and geopolitical events; potential
inability to implement our business strategies; potential inability
to grow revenues; potential inability to attract and retain key
personnel; interruptions in delivery of critical supplies,
equipment and raw materials due to credit or other limitations
imposed by vendors; assertion of claims, lawsuits and proceedings
against us; potential inability to satisfy debt and lease
obligations; potential inability to maintain an effective system of
internal controls over financial reporting; potential inability or
failure to timely file periodic reports with the Securities and
Exchange Commission; potential inability to list our securities on
any securities exchange or market or maintain the listing of our
securities; and work stoppages or other labor difficulties.
Occurrence of such events or circumstances could have a material
adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of
operations or cash flows, or the market price of our securities.
All subsequent written and oral forward-looking statements by or
attributable to us or persons acting on our behalf are expressly
qualified in their entirety by these factors. Except as may be
required by securities or other law, we undertake no obligation to
publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether
as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.
Neither this press release nor any related call
or discussion constitutes an offer to sell, the solicitation of an
offer to buy or a recommendation with respect to any securities of
the Company, the fund or any other issuer.
Contact
information: |
Comstock Mining Inc.P.O. Box
1118 Virginia City, NV 89440ComstockMining.com |
Corrado De GasperisExecutive
Chairman & CEOTel (775)
847-4755degasperis@comstockmining.com |
Zach SpencerDirector of
External RelationsTel (775) 847-5272
Ext.151questions@comstockmining.com |
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