Those are the next three up that everyone should be looking out for. And they’re coming soon. Beyond that, next year, we’ll be kicking off a full feasibility study with a site identified and selected. We’ll be selecting an engineering procurement construction company. We’ll be submitting pathway approvals to the necessary regulators. And we’ll be securing the funding source for the construction of hub number one. So I’m going to stop there and turn it back to Corrado. I appreciate everybody listening. That was a lot. And we look forward to take any questions you have on it.
Corrado De Gasperis : Thanks, Billy. And I hope that everyone found that detail both clear and meaningful. Our fuels team has made tremendous progress and positioned us for what is coming next. As Billy said, we’re fully engaging this model with our customers, partners and investors and we’re all working toward the execution of the first commercial agreements and many more thereafter. We’re working to commercialize fuels with offtake agreements, feedstock agreements, strategic partners that will deliver again, as Billy highlighted, non-dilutive capital and our first production facility. But we can’t unilaterally dictate the timing. But I can tell you that everyone engaged has a real sense of urgency. And it’s a strategic priority for them to get the feedstock and offtake agreements done sooner than later.
We sincerely believe we’re enabling the highest value, lowest carbon solution, all the evidence points to it and supports it. And all the companies that we’re engaged with are validating our differentiation and now see how much sense this makes for them. Frankly, we really don’t see any real alternatives. This is the only feedstock that can practically and meaningfully decarbonize at scale. And as Billy just showed you, our solution enables it. So it’s happening now. It’s happening in the best holistic and most meaningful way. And we very much look forward to sharing those developments and agreements with you as soon as they’re completed. Well, I’d say with that, we can stop. I’m really pleased that we got to share much more information than I think is typical for these calls.
But we should go ahead and move on. Do we have some questions?
A – Will Maze: Well, thanks, gentlemen, for a very insightful presentation. And we do have questions. And as mentioned, we’re now moving to the Q&A portion of the call. Reminder, you can submit your questions directly in the Q&A module. We have had many questions come in prior to the call. So let’s get started with those. First question, When will the data from the satellite become available? And how do you really see it impacting Comstock and/or GenMat?
Corrado De Gasperis: Well, within a week or so of the satellite reaching orbit, God willing, it will establish a beacon that our ground station provider will be looking for and working to establish a secure link. So that’s like step one. Like once the link is established, the satellite will then orbit and take a limited series of images that will then need to be transmitted, downlinked and decrypted. We do that all with our, our service provider on the ground. From our perspective, we’re actually putting a big buffer on that entire setup and that entire process establishment with the ground station. We’re thinking two months sort of on the outside. So everyone should be thinking mid-January, in my opinion, to be safe for verification of the live operations.
Once the process is in place and verified and functioning, then we’ll start more specific scans of the Comstock and some other mineral properties. From there, our teams, who are already working together, will integrate that data with the existing historic data, as I mentioned, and continue to build a new predictive model of the Comstock geology. Ultimately, those models will guide our drilling and what we call ground truthing that we hope will validate the predictions, validate the geologic models, and frankly, accelerate and advance us to our 2 million gold equivalent target and beyond. But, ultimately, it does something more than that. From GenMat’s perspective and ours, it creates a new mineral discovery platform that can be used globally.
So we couldn’t be more excited. It’s a pioneering activity. But so far, all the lights are green.
Will Maze: Very interesting. Next question comes in is congratulating you on the New Orleans conference. He says that I know it’s not an easy conference to get into, an invite. Will the presentation from the conference also be made public?
Corrado De Gasperis: Yeah. Honestly, I’ve been trying to enter the New Orleans conference for a few years. I’m sure there’s some people laughing or smiling on the other side of this call about that. It is by invitation only. Brien Lundin found the Comstock story, and in particular, GenMat’s existing and developing capability fascinating. And they’ve been getting a lot of demand for how AI is being used for mineral discovery. And we’re all actually very excited about next week. This conference, in particular, has a tremendous number of technical analysts in representation, certainly sophisticated resource investors and some very, very high quality companies. So, yeah, thank you for that. We’re looking forward to it. Any presentation that we make, similar to the one Billy just made today, we will post it on our website and file an 8-K form.
Will Maze: Next question is asking, when will you actually see revenue from Comstock Metals? And do you expect metal segment to be profitable at the demonstration scale?
Corrado De Gasperis: As I mentioned on our call, I think I mentioned, our preliminary industry scale financial model is very robust. The 75,000 to 80,000 ton per annum industry scale, from what we’ve estimated and diligenced so far is it’s remarkable. We look forward to giving you that guidance in the first quarter of next year once the demonstration site is up and running. The startup rate and the demonstration facility of 4,000 to 8,000 tons really is most likely a breakeven scenario. Although with these measurements, it could be profitable at the higher volumes. But once the panels start flowing, we’ll fine tune the process, we’ll finalize the engineering for the industry scale facility, and we’ll give updates and guidance on that.
The sooner we get a few months of startup operations under our belt, the sooner we can finalize all of those details, but we don’t see any major obstacles in that path. Revenue really starts as soon as we’re permitted and receiving panels that we can process. We’re a little bit reliant on the permits and the Nevada Department of Environmental Protection, our main regulator, who, frankly, is pretty desperately understaffed. We just met with them yesterday. And the good news is that the air quality permit, typically the more complex one, typically the one I get anxious about, seems to be right on track for this year. The solid waste operating permit looks like it’ll come right after the air quality permit now. But we know that they’re reviewing the permit.
We met with them yesterday. And quite frankly, it’s very similar to the prior permit that we got approved last year. So once we receive the permits, everything will be in place, we’ll immediately start it up, and we’ll move right into operations. We’re going to be operating in the first quarter of next year, it seems, come hell or high water. So we’re looking forward to all of that.
Will Maze: The next question coming in is, we’d like to see some insider buying, can we expect some insider buying?
Corrado De Gasperis: I’m going to say yes at the beginning, yes at the end. But I would first like to acknowledge that management and the board today hold over 11 million shares, and really all of us have our most meaningful net worth, and in some cases, our lives tied into the success of the company. I personally haven’t seen too many senior management teams or boards, for that matter, more fully committed and dedicated to what they’re doing from what I see from our teams. It’s truly an honor to be part of it. I don’t I don’t say that lightly. The fuels guys have been spending – it’s probably almost two decades of their lives and certainly the last 10 years bringing what Billy just reviewed with you to fruition. I’d also encourage you guys to all invest in the company more because of what we’re accomplishing and the impact expected from those achievements.
