Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Comstock Mining Second Quarter 2017 Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Mr. Corrado De Gasperis. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Maria, and good morning everyone. It's Corrado here and welcome to our 2017 second quarter conference call. We completed our second quarter review and filed our financial favorance on Form 10-Q last night. This morning we also released he summary of those results and selected strategic and financial highlights in that press release. If you haven't seen that press release, please go to our website at www.comstockmining.com, under news/press releases. My comments today will briefly discuss results today and the progress so far and strategic initiatives will keep the same if not a briefer format for the call and I'll certainly be available for the Q&A after the prepared remarks. As always, any statements related to matters that are not purely historical facts may constitute forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and are subject to the same risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. These risks and uncertainties are detailed in the reports filed by the company and the SEC, and in this morning's release, and all the forward-looking statements made during this call are also subject to those same and other risks that we can't identify. I'm going to be very concise and brief with the prepared remarks this morning, just delimiter to on cost performance and then a good update on the strategic activities and ventures and that will leave us some more time for Q&A. First with cost, our performance in the first half of this year does put us on an all-time low for our history as a fully permitted infrastructure junior mining company and as we discussed at the annual meeting, we're very focused on getting them even lower. We've given some guidance for the full year in the 10-Q and the guidance for the…

Yes, thank you. [Operator Instructions] We'll take our first question from Mike Oswaliss [ph].

Hi, Mike. How are you?

Not too bad. I'm an individual investor. I just had a quick question any word on when this joint venture partner is going to be made public?

Yeah, it would - it really would be upon signing and closing the definitive agreement.

Okay.

We're under confidentiality. Frankly, it's difficult sometimes to keep those confidentialities. So we've been trying to be very prudent in disclosing what we can, obviously the risk of talking about it in advance if it doesn't happen is that it doesn't happen but these activities have been very, very collaborative, very productive. We feel like we're moving forward regardless. So hopefully it will be this month.

Great. Well, thank you, appreciate it.

Thank you, Mike.

And we'll take our next question from Harvey Redcroft [ph], private investor.

Good morning, Corrado.

Good morning.

Can you give us a little update on what's happening with the stock, I'm noticing that just today's performance it's already up to an excess of 13 million shares. You have any new institutional investors that are taking a look at the Company?

Yeah, I think that is for sure. We have on - it's always - this is always a double headed coin to write. Liquidity is a very, very good thing. We certainly think from our investors perspective it's a risk reducer, the more liquid the stock the better for our investors. But liquidity also seems to beget liquidity. So to answer your question, it really wasn't until April that we were starting to target, update to our story, we didn't feel prior to then, prior to the refinancing and getting out of that pretty difficult first quarter that we weren't going to have enough traction with the go forward activities. We're absolutely aware of institutional investment frankly coast to coast, right. We have - we see pockets on the East Coast, we see pockets on the West Coast, but we haven't gotten some inquiries from some names that are gratifying I guess I would say. On the flip side is, there is obviously someone selling when someone is buying as we were marching below $0.15. I think I mentioned on the last call, there's a new thing into my closet and I kept eyeing it, to kill myself but we kept the faith and we just kept marching forward and I think for me the most important thing is that the business model has got traction, the business model is moving forward nowhere near as fast as we want it to. We're trying to be diligent and patient but we're also impatient. We have a sense of urgency. So I think you'll see if you have record days, I don't expect you'll see that too often. But I think you've seen an elevated level, I think it's here to stay and I think we're working very, very hard on it. May be one other bit of color, I've never had a lot of success working with third party by our firms, but we've connected with two or three professionals that have really worked their asses off for us communicating effectively the story even before it was gaining traction and setting a lot of foundation. So I don't think it's luck, I think it's a tremendously hard effort. It's a high maintenance effort. When you're selling land and paying off debt and trying to get traction with new technologies and developing exciting mines, it takes a little hand-holding, it takes a little explanation, but we're getting there. Our hope is in the next six months, this thing simplifies dramatically and starts moving a lot faster. So that's the best I can offer right now. I'm sure people will be looking towards the filings and in the next you few weeks or so to see who is accumulating and it's good. I think net-net, it's good.

The potential joining partner, a lot to be purchasing in the open market or right under a definite -

No. No, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah, we're under - anybody that has information that would be considered material non-public regardless of agreements can't be trading the stock. So we're not aware of any of that kind of thing.

I'm referring to the - of the joint minor partnership.

Oh, yeah. No, I wouldn't imagine at all, no.

Okay. It seems like an opportunity if they're going to be doing the digging that they know what the value of the stock is.

No, we're seeing it from institutional funds.

Okay, from the real estate standpoint and the water standpoint.

Oh, yeah, good. I went a little skinny in my prepared remarks there. So thanks for the question. Lot of activity happening, first and foremost, we said about 18 times since last year that this new USA Parkway was the critical catalyst, it was originally scheduled for December, but there was a lot of rumor mill that it was going to be done by the end of September. Last week, the Nevada Department of Transportation announced a ribbon cutting on August 28 with full open functionality on September 8. So we could not be happier with that project coming in literally a little bit ahead of schedule and presumably on budget for the state. When it's on time, it usually is on budget. They also completed already without fanfare or announcement, the roundabout right on Highway 50 that USA Parkway will connect into that roundabout is within immediate proximity of our industrial property in our water rights. And it looks gorgeous, right. So the whole area is developing in a way that - it is hurting to say in a way that was expected. It's probably more appropriate to say in a way that everybody was crossing their fingers and holding their breath that it would. So kudos to the state for spending $88 million and committing another $45 million to expand Highway 50 up and down the corridor that all of that touches our land and so that couldn't be better. More immediately, we got updates from our brokers last Friday and there are multiple properties going into escrow around us, some smaller ones, and there are multiple parties have been saying our properties and our lands and areas immediately around our lands. Some of the properties that are going into escrow are fully functional, some of the properties…

Good. Your tenant remarks addressed Tesla and Apple.

Yeah.

I thought that Google had picked up 1,300 acres as well, is that still the case or –?

Yes, it is. So there's probably four anchors if you will, right. Tesla being ground zero and Tesla is on - Tesla's news just keeps getting stronger. I mean literally I think they've already moved from 6 million square feet to 8 million square feet, but they're literally talking plans now to have three floors and potentially 15 million to 18 million square feet. I mean it's hard to - it's impossible to envision the facility. You have to come out and see it. But around that you have Apple investing a billion in doubling the size of its existing data center. You have Switch, which has the largest cooperative data center in the world already established in there. And then Google purchased property for $30 million that rankest with Tesla and Switch in the top three land holders in that industrial park. Now Google hasn't announced any plans and it's not irrational to assume that like Apple and Switch, they're going to put a data center in there, but there's also been tremendous amount of a rumor mill about their autonomous car research and development campus and where that's going to end up so.

Any ranchman offered through any of those four players?

There has just recently been some dialog between Tesla - and I wouldn't say with an agent of ours but a very close relationship. And what we learned there is that they're talking to a lot of people about getting their people housed. So that's happening. One of the people, one of the developers in Silver Springs is looking at multiple different properties for starting to put up apartments homes etcetera in place. So those are the hubs, right, Carson, Dayton, Silver Springs and Fernley, are they going to be the four biggest beneficiaries of USA Parkways. Silver Springs is in the bull's eye and Dayton is where the Daney Ranch is just to the right. So again I think it's a matter of time we will get more proactive in reaching out and we've just updated all the profiles. I don't think the one thing with the ranch is it's impossible to envision it and so we just posted an aerial drone fly over of all of the homes on the ranch, I mean there's five homes, right all the homes on the ranch, their internal, external view of the facilities. You can now get a pretty but good understanding of it was a much better than before and now we'll start to do targeted outreach. We always felt USA Parkway was the biggest catalyst and so now it's here.

Great. Thanks, Corrado.

Thanks, Harvey. Thanks for asking that.

We'll take our next question from David Brigham with Brigham & Associates.

Hi, David.

Hey, how are doing? I've been around these diggings long enough to remember when your stock was $3 or $4. So it's nice to see so much positive happening. I'm curious, could you explain that what you should before about this is going to be quite a subset of people who know about your company, our company and its prospects. Do we suffer from a lack of exposure, is it, or do we have plenty of exposure I mean after all the stock prices were higher would give you an awful lot of options you don't have now.

Yeah, I don't.

I guess what I'm saying is that if we could by some quarter or to get a hold of every single fact and figure about Comstock can publish it to the world that wouldn't be a bad thing in our case would it?

No, no, very good. Let me say this I think that there was disappointment last year, which is justified in terms of our development we feel like we're getting it back on track very well now, but you know there were some this time last year. I think emerging from that we had to do some refinancing I think there's probably some concerns about our balance sheet. We just had to get through a couple of important things. We had to get through a restructuring and cost reduction, we had to refinance the existing debt and push it out for years and then we got a little curve ball thrown at us not making excuses that the weather was horrific in the first quarter, we really had to buckle down and fight through that. And we have a small team so it's like a seal team, but it was working around the clock. And really since April, we feel like our activities have really started to be forward looking, had really started to be productive. And I think that's first. So now that we've gotten that and you can get that and not have the market respond to it. I think we're seeing the market respond to it. And to the earlier question, professionally institutionally and when you start to see real institutions coming in, in the way they are then people will join in on that. We have started out reaching but not - certainly not on a global scale but interestingly as we're getting enquiries from Canada we're now getting some serious enquiries from Europe, but we had an enquiries from China which is outside of my head right now, but you never know. And so to the extent we have the capacity and we're feeling that we're getting it. We can start to get the message out in a much more constructive way and much more broadly. It's been harder prior to last three months, it's been a little better than the last three months and I think it will just keep getting better. So the point is well taken, more to do there. I think it's important that the messaging is accurate. Sometimes the Comstock fame is for massive history, we want people to understand there's some real current, there is some real modern stuff happening right now and it's positive. So we'll work on that more. We did add some resources to do that and will continue do I guess on that pavement.

We'll take our next question from Thomas Ramirez, private investor.

Hello, Tom. Tom?

We'll take our next question from James Dell [ph], private investor.

Hey, Corrado. Wait, just put you on speaker. Okay, hey, listen, could you - you touched on it a little bit, but are we getting any real nibbles on your industrial property?

Yeah, we're getting real nibbles. I mean there's two parties that have been doing diligence. Feels like a couple weeks now talking to county managers, checking permits, checking zoning, there's other developers that are just enquiring and there's other developers that are enquiring that are diligent thing other properties around us. So, it's important to balance it like you'll have - if you're in Reno, you have closings every day. I mean it's almost unbelievable, but and you're seeing that Dayton and Fernley also, but in Silver Springs what you're seeing is a lot of diligence, a lot of sizing op, a lot of prospecting and comparing and certainly if you're just out to get land and a lot of it like 50 acres or 100 acres you could step out a bit it and get it a little cheaper than what we're propositioning. But if you want to be central to the equation, we're one of the key properties. We're adjacent to an airport, one of our prospects met with the airport to talk about how you get through the fence access from our property to the airport I mean that kind of activity going on right now.

Good. All right. Next question. You did mention of the Occidental, a little. Could you give us an update on what's going on up there?

Yeah, so as a reminder the Occidental and also formally known as the Brunswick Lode is a 1.5 mile strike that has some 40-odd claims amongst it, something like 34 unpatented claims and six patented claims or something very close to that. And we've been doing a bunch of historical work on it. In other words trying to first leverage and catalog in and make sure that we understand the history with a couple of meaningful findings. And we've also been doing some work on the Sutro Tunnel Company and we were collaborating some data but Larry Martin, our Chief Geologist, identified a report when the Sutro Tunnel was coming underneath that Occidental loading. And just another point in history, the Occidental had very, very minor amount of formal workings. It stand parallel to the Comstock Lode. And historically there might be 600 - I mean there's a time difference there between the Comstock Lode's rocks and Occidental but it's not big. And they mined a couple of pods of very high grade near surface like 300 feet and then there's a shaft or two had like 500 feet, maybe one at 700 feet. I mean very, very light in any context of the load, which you know was mined to 3,600, 3,700 feet. And so this work that we're doing includes surface mapping, it includes collaborate, coordinating the tire workings, there's few, but then we identified a report from the Sutro Tunnel development that had identified 50 feet of something like a quarter of an ounce per ton very high grade gold at about, it came around 1,200 or 1,300 feet something like that. And so that's stunning 50 feet is stunning. It wasn't crystal clear on the continuity of the 50 feet, but it's - if we put a drill hole anywhere with 50 feet of quarter of an ounce per ton, I'll pass out, like you have to revive me. So they haven't mined really in any way past 350 feet, couple of shafts, a little bit deeper, but at 1,200 feet corroborating evidence, there's a high grade vein. So we'd love to put some drill holes in the Occidental. What we're talking about with our geology team is that when we're ready to mobilize some drilling on the Dayton would be ready to have let's say half a dozen surgical hole that's a bad term because nothing surgical really but as precise as we could get the most amount of data from based on what we could learn today. So that's really the update. It's not a lot of attention compared to the Dayton and the Spring Valley work, but there's absolutely nothing that we know and certainly a lot that we do know that suggests that the Occidental could be as important as a target as the Dayton and Spring Valley combined. They're both very long known mineral strikes train have these consolidated the entire package on.

Okay. In previous conversations we talked about a joint venture possibility up there, were any discussions ongoing or the terminated or what?

Yeah, now, we had a couple of I would say smaller partners make enquiries, nothing's been terminated. I just think that they've been lower priority and not sort of facilitated in the same light, but they're still there and they're certainly feasible. But no real update there. Nothing's happened in the last three months.

Okay. Well, keep it going.

Thank you. Thank you.

Have fun. All right, bye.

All right, bye.

We'll take our next question from Lawrence Janney [ph], private investor.

Good morning, Corrado. How are you?

How are you?

Good. So for clarity purposes, this hypothetical joint venture, are they other than adding some financing and helping out with that are they like more expert at extracting resource? Are they not a middleman that's something that you guys couldn't do yourself? Is it more efficient to have them? Are they bringing something to the table but you couldn't?

Yeah, so our pre-requisites are strong mining competency. So, the executive and/or executives have long experience in both open pit and underground mining because Lucerne is still has the potential for both possibilities tends to be riskier. In our case we have very valuable lands that take care of that. So, I don't know. Is that a good answer? Right. We're going to have to raise some amount of equity, but we're not looking to do deals. We're not looking to complicate the structure, right. We wanted to be very simple, very clean, very efficient and only as is needed. So, we've been doing that over the last few months and we've gotten through an interest payment, which was fantastic and we've got a good buffer and now it should be very, say, as we move forward, I'm going to focus as much if not most of my time on these land sales as I am on the ventures to move forward, only because of how important it is to the balance sheet and the company's value.

It sounds good. Good luck.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you Corrado.

We'll take our next question from Jordan Einstein [ph], private investor.

Yes. Good morning, sir. This could be one more question or three depending on how you would answer the first one. But what I'm curious is in terms of the joint ventures, would you be able to release whether or not these companies are privately held or publicly traded?

So, we have a bucket of both. We have a couple of publics and two publics, three privates, so it's a hodgepodge.

Okay.

I know that doesn't help you, but I can't really disclose there.

Yeah. Would you be able to say what exchanges are traded on?

I don't know. I think -

Okay. Yeah, I'm just trying to squeeze out any type of information we can on it, but, okay, well, I appreciate it now. Keep up the good work.

No problem. Thank you very much.

We'll take our next question from Carl Frankson, private investor.

Hi, Corrado. I almost hesitated to ask this question, because it's irrelevant and I'm almost embarrassed to ask it, because I'm a long time investor. As a matter of fact on my desk I brought up a couple of the ingots from the first [indiscernible] on September 9, 2012. Yeah. And as I say, maybe it's advancing age, but my memory is kind of deserts me a little bit. We went through the infrastructure. We had the equipment. We opened the mine. We've got the ingots from the first pour. The infrastructure, we changed the roads. We've got the people, the machinery, and five years later we're not producing any gold at all and I hear things like two years for the Lucerne and stuff like that. Again, it's not a quarterly question. It's kind of a historical question and I should know the answer. I am afraid I don't. What happened?

No, it's a great question. So, it's really Lucerne, right, and let's just reiterate the infrastructure is in place. The equipment is in place, even the BLM, right away roads in place et cetera, the - we started mining. We mined and extracted ore from September 2012, actually from August 2012 we started extracting the ore all the way until September 2015 and then we processed right through December '16 getting 90% yields on the gold and 60% yields on the silver. And that did completely enable the county to give us a landmark expansion of our permits. We mined right up to the permit boundary on everything that we did and then we got massive expansions on our permits. And for the sake of history, right, I made the decision to try to thread the needle and transition that open pit mine into an underground mine, because we were literally seemingly arm's length from this high grade corridor. And that was more complex and more difficult than we expected it would be. It also, though, built two major underground tunnels that position us remarkably well for the next round of drilling and development. But we pushed ourselves hard to make that transition and strained our capital resources to do it. And really there's two questions here. If we're going to continue the Lucerne as an underground development, which is a possibility, there is a complex network of high grade ore body down there that could take a couple of years of drilling and development. With the not certain outcome, I think you certainly will get a mine plan, but to what extent and what length is not certain. In the process of what we've been doing lately, we've also reassessed just extending and expanding the surface mine, which is…

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Carl.

We'll take our next question from Derek Smith, private investor.

Hey, good morning, good afternoon. Can you just tell me - give some color on the AMT program or the ATM - excuse me, ATM program?

So, yeah, so we have both, American mining and tunneling is one. And then the equity line is the other, which one were you referring to?

Yeah, the ATM, I'm sorry, the aftermarket.

Yeah, so we actually have two facilities that we have in place. One that's been in place over a year that didn't use hardly at all in 2016 and one that we put place in April. And they're really designed to allow us to safely access equity as we need it. With the land sales coming up, we don't really want to - we certainly don't want to raise - we look for not to raise any equity at these levels, but we certainly don't want to raise a lot of equity or do a structured transaction. So these facilities just give us more efficient access. The one that's been in place for over a year, it's structured by design not ever trade more than 9% of any day's volume, it's very light in terms of its implication and use. With these higher volumes obviously it can be more effective in some cases but that's really in a nutshell, we have one with a $5 million facility, one $3.25 million facility. So they are not huge, I mean that's not small to us, but we just wanted to as a public company make sure that we had the tools in place such that we never did have any kind of liquidity issues.

Has there ever been any discussions about approaching private investors for loans of the Company?

We have $10.7 million four-year loan to the Company, it's secured by our assets. And as we sell those non-mining assets, we hope to fully pay that off. When we have mine plans and production schedule I think that financing becomes a very nice alternative for us. But right now we're not in a mood to increase our debt or in the mood to pay off our debt and get ourselves funded to production. So, yes is the answer, but depending on the circumstance and the time, we'll have to wait what's the best and safest for us to get there.

And just lastly then who makes the decision on what company you use to exercise the ATM offerings?

There's been a tremendous amount of diligence on that and we probably talked to every mine and everyone's mother. Frankly, we're not fans of the conventional facilities that we see out there or even the banks that use them, even the better banks who claim to use them better. What we've tried to structure is something that can be trustworthy, used very lightly or we're placing stock into investor funds that we know. The biggest negative in my opinion is you never - you don't know where the stock is going. Really if you look at our history, the one thing that we've done a good job in is the institutions that we've been able to bring and hold in especially our top 10. So we probably have an unusual amount of tension to - first of all we have a lot of resistance to even the notion but ultimately if we challenge a couple of assumptions about knowing where the stock goes first and secondly how it's effectively used. If we could control those things then we thought it was a good addition to this, the tool box not to be used lightly only - not to be used loosely only as needed for the current circumstance. Our recent circumstance unfortunately because we had a cash interest payment due July 1, we had to use them more than we would have liked to at lower share prices. But again we're trying to bridge to a much different place and I feel like we're on the right path to getting there.

Yeah. That's why having IAA Financial, is that still the group that you use? And Leviston, I think it is, is that right?

Yeah, IAA has been - IAA is sort of the parent structure. We use a very specific broker that's been with the Company for over 8 years, probably knows us better than anyone that I know and is incredibly trustworthy. So they're not if they use a NFS infrastructure, Fidelity Infrastructure, it's very professional activity. They're not - in that case, it's a very light use, they're not market makers per se the way that you would think. Leviston is the firm and professional that we've used to identify good long-term resource investors and we're very pleased with that as well.

I just noticed I see the price that you guys got was I mean maybe if I'm missing - I don't know if I'm reading it correctly, but it was $0.155 or what have you and that seems like in the low end of the range but it's what is it.

There is not - that's the timing of the market which as I said was unfortunate because we had an interest payment coming up than it was the cost of these facilities. These facilities are probably the most efficient facilities in the market in terms of cost of using that.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen the time allotted for question-and-answers has come to a close. I would now like to turn the call back to Mr. De Gasperis for closing remarks.

Thank you, Maria. Thank you for the call. I'm finally taking the full hour, we want just slightly over, it's very important for us that there's full transparency that there's full understanding I'd ask you all to read the 10-Q and if you have any other questions, please don't hesitate to circle back and ask. Also please be on the lookout of us getting some of these things over the finish line and announce sooner rather than later. Thank you all for your time.

And this concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.