Benzinga | Apr 13, 2021 06:47AM EDT

Comstock Releases Shareholder Letter Highlights 'Transformational Green Shift with Climate Smart Mining'

Comstock Mining Inc. (NYSE:LODE) ("Comstock" and the "Company") today announced that its executive chairman and chief executive officer issued the following letter to Comstock's shareholders in advance of the Annual General Shareholders Meeting.

Dear Shareholders:

On behalf of our Board of Directors, employees and partners, we would like to thank all of you for participating in a pivotal, exciting and successful year. We have repositioned our assets by acquiring new technologies, launching new businesses, liquidating non-core and non-performing assets, and eliminating our debt. We have now positioned our existing platform for extraordinary growth and high-impact value creation with clean innovations, climate smart mining, and ESG driven projects.

This transformational "green shift" began years ago and gained traction with our global mercury remediation and lithium-ion battery recycling projects. Those efforts recently culminated in the commissioning of our first commercial Mercury Clean-Up LLC ("MCU") project in the Philippines, and the acquisition of a controlling stake in LiNiCo Corporation ("LiNiCo"), and its 20,000 ton per year lithium-ion battery recycling and 10,000 ton per year of 99.9% pure cathode production in the Tahoe Reno Industrial ("TRI") Center located in Storey County, NV.

Each MCU system has the potential to produce more than $12 million in pre-tax operating income per year (depending on site conditions, mineral content and spot price). The LiNiCo facility, at just 33% of its capacity and 60% of applicable commodity prices, has the potential to generate more than $100 million in sales with estimated pre-tax operating income margins exceeding 30%. We're also actively exploring expansions and acquisitions that support and accelerate LiNiCo's growth with a hub-and-spoke model.

Comstock has historically focused on the extraction of precious and strategic metals, where the words "precious" and "strategic" were conventionally defined by magnitude of impact and relative scarcity. We now believe that the global clean energy transition, escalating population growth, and accelerating natural resource scarcity is converging into a "perfect storm" of global demand for a broader array of strategic materials, beyond metals, including anything involving carbon, energy, and water -- without the corresponding global capacity to sustainably or reliably meet escalating demand. Our strategic focus is consequently expanding to include the extraction and valorization of a portfolio of critical and inevitably scarce materials, with an initial preference for high cash throughput generators that complement our existing competencies and operations. We are evaluating several potential transactions and investment opportunities, the first of which we hope to close this during this quarter.

Our employee incentive compensation is 100% linked to specific performance objectives designed to deliver $500 million in shareholder value and more than $12.00 per share by 2023. Our team is focused on achieving and exceeding those targets because the "perfect storm" of current demand isn't the only thing on our horizon. A renaissance of green innovation is upon us and the pace is increasing worldwide.

We will be a leader in those efforts, with a focus on the systemic development and commercialization of new technologies and robust new lines-of-businesses, such as MCU and LiNiCo, among others, that have the potential to sustainably contribute to humanity's rapidly-escalating demand for increasingly scarce natural resources, including the strategic metals and other resources needed to fuel the world-wide quantum surge in, and transition to, clean energy, carbon-neutrality, and natural products.

We are systematically strengthening our organization and positioning for continuous throughput growth. We will scale our MCU footprint, enhancing efficacy and targeting new deployments in qualified geographies. We will build our LiNiCo recycling and battery production business. We will acquire and build accretive technologies, projects, and businesses. We will measure the wealth we create comprehensively, with throughput as our primary financial measure, and by measuring and reporting the positive natural and social impacts of all of our activities. By sustainably delivering more than $500 million in shareholder value, we will have built an innovative, continuously growing, throughput-generating, ESG-based enterprise with diverse lines of businesses that rise above the scarcity challenges.

We are at the dawn of a new era. This tragic pandemic is nearing its end and it taught us how closely we are all connected. Not just to each other and the natural world that sustains us, but to the financial, natural, and social systems that have the power to save us. We will contribute to that end by positively impacting the existing systems, and building and integrating new systems and shareholder value along the way.



We look forward to our next communication and seeing those of you that can attend this year's AGM, where we plan on showcasing our existing lines of businesses, employees and partners, including the results of our planned near-term transactions. Thank you always for your continued interest and support.



Kindest regards,

Corrado De Gasperis

Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Comstock Mining Inc.