Lance Glinn:

Welcome in to another episode of the Inside the ICE House podcast. Today's guest is Gary Evans. He's the chairman and CEO of NYSE Listed US Antimony. Gary, thanks so much for joining us inside the ICE House.

Gary Evans:

Thank you for having me today.

Lance Glinn:

So, I might not have to tell you this, but antimony, as you can assume, isn't something that people regularly think about. It's not always on the top of mind of a lot of the average people, but for those who aren't familiar with antimony, US Antimony Corporation, let's start big picture with our conversation. What does the company do and what about its products and its capabilities really set it apart?

Gary Evans:

Well, you're correct. I would say 99% of the population doesn't know what antimony is. I didn't know what it was three years ago. So, it's a critical mineral. It's actually number one on the critical mineral list with the Department of War. And it's a very necessary ingredient that we mine and that we buy from foreign countries to put into a process called a smelter, and that smelter makes seven different types of antimony products. And those products are either used for industrial side of the business or the military side.

And in the military, antimony is used in bullets. It's a hardy material for lead. It's used in primers. It's used in laser-guided missiles, drones, night vision cameras, night vision binoculars, airplane seats to eject a pilot out of his plane if he has a problem. It's used in fire retardants for roofing and for tents. All the military tents have antimony in them to keep them from catching fire. It's using quantum computing.

All the new AI technology buildings use antimony to keep fire retardants on the roofs, as well as the wiring that's in those buildings. Your battery in your car is antimony, lead, water, and plastic. It's used in solar panels. It's a big component for solar panels. So, it has many uses. The shininess, the glass of your iPhone is antimony. So, lots of ceramics, lots of glass, lots of different materials. But military, it's a really necessary ingredient.

Lance Glinn:

And so, it seems like, again, just based off of your answer, it's in all these different things that impact our day-to-day life, it's really behind the scenes. You said our iPhones. I use my iPhone every single day. I'm on the train. I'm at work. I'm at home. I have my iPhone in my hand. I have it nearby. I'm looking at the glass. Clearly, we're using antimony in our everyday lives.

And while it's not a household word, as you had mentioned before, you did say that it was number one on the critical minerals list. And critical minerals, especially over the last few months, have really become more and more into focus. Why should investors, policy makers, just overall consumers too, why should they care about antimony right now?

Gary Evans:

Well, unfortunately, our prior administrations for the government have laid behind the law and let China with this 100-year plan, go around the world and tie up critical minerals and rare earths in 40-some-odd countries, as well as their own country. And they did it in a very unscrupulous manner from the standpoint that they'd take control of a critical mineral and a rare earth. They drive the price down because they had so much of it. It would drive all the refineries and all the mines out of business.

And that's what happened with antimony in the United States. We're the only two antimony smelters left. Everybody else is closed. They drive the price down and then cut everybody off. And that's what they did in September of '24. So, antimony prices have been averaging 4 to $5 a pound for years. And all of a sudden, they went to $30 a pound because we had no more supply and they controlled 80% of worldwide supply, 90% of refining.

So, our Department of War, at that time, Department of Defense was getting their antimony from China. So, Houston, we have a problem, and that's when our business started taking off.

Lance Glinn:

And so, US antimony is the only fully integrated antimony company in the world outside of Russia and China, obviously, as you just mentioned. What are the strategic, or at least more, unpack it more for us. What are the strategic, the economic, the resilience benefits really of mining and processing antimony here in the US compared to all the way across the world in Russia and in China?

Gary Evans:

Well, if we control it in our own mines, which we have a mine in Montana and we have almost 30,000 acres leased in Alaska, that's my lowest cost product. So, it's typically 50% to 70% cheaper than me buying it from another country. Also, I know what I have, the problem with buying from six different countries is one country may have antimony with too much arsenic. One country may have antimony with too much lead. One country might have antimony with too much sulfur.

So, all those impurities we have to deal within our smelter. So, it takes us time, takes us money, takes us effort to get rid of those impurities. If I have my own supply, I know what I've got and I can be more efficient and move faster. So, that's where we hope to get to. It's not going to happen for a couple years, but we're making progress. But so, being fully integrated gives us control of our destiny.

Lance Glinn:

And so, knowing your product, just to your point, if you order from elsewhere, it might have too much arsenic. It might have too much lead. It might have too much of something else that in the smeltering plant, you then have to get rid of. But controlling your own product, how does that end-to-end control rate really help in the quality, the costs, the overall global supply chain number? How does managing everything here in the United States help differentiate among doing it elsewhere?

Gary Evans:

Well, I can give you a perfect example. We were buying antimony from an Australian company in 2025, and it would take two to three months on the container, one transload stopped and Badong, China. The Chinese customs took our antimony, kept it from April until October. I had to get the State Department and White House involved.

So, we're always dealing with some kind of transportation issue. In the country of Chad, we had to hire a guy. We have a boots on the ground in Chad to make sure the antimony gets from the mine, gets to the warehouse, gets to the port, gets to the container, gets to the ship, because you can imagine there's a lot of fraud, there's a lot of embezzlement, there's a lot of problems in these Third World countries.

So, it's just much more time-consuming, much more expensive. We have our own antimony in Montana, Alaska, we control it. We don't have any of these other issues. We also have to post letters of credit. We have to show we have the ability to buy it, and we're always wrangling, negotiating the contracts and how we pay them, and it's really a lot of work.

Lance Glinn:

A lot of unnecessary and inconvenient variables...

Gary Evans:

Correct.

Lance Glinn:

... that get thrown your way without doing it here in the United States.

Gary Evans:

And we spend money. I mean, we're having inventory. So, I have to give some kind of deposits for this antimony we buy from these other countries that are in the millions of dollars and I don't see any return for 60, 90 days. So, it's also a working capital issue.

Lance Glinn:

So, I want to go back to something you said at the beginning, right? I had mentioned that, and you even agreed that 99% of people don't really think of antimony or think about antimony, know what it is. And look, full disclosure, right? I go into a lot of these podcasts and I, as I do my research leading up to it, start learning more and more about the company.

But before I started my research with US Antimony, I didn't know much about the product either. You said three years ago before you took over this role, you didn't know much about it either.

Gary Evans:

I knew nothing.

Lance Glinn:

What got you into this role?

Gary Evans:

Well, I have got a history of turning around companies and shareholders that got me involved in a company some 25 years ago that was really successful, asked me to get involved in this company. My background is really oil and gas. For 38 years, I had three companies public in that arena. And so, I'm going, "Well, what do I know about mining?" I know a lot about finance. I know a lot about banking. I've raised eight and a half billion dollars in my life on Wall Street. I'm well known on Wall Street.

So, I thought, "I don't know if I want to get involved in this company." I reluctantly agreed to just come on the board as a board member. First day on the board, I was made chairman of the audit committee, found out we had employee embezzling money, found out that CFO said we weren't going to make our 10K on time. So, I was thrown into a briar patch and so I'm a fixer-

Lance Glinn:

A lot of problems right away.

Gary Evans:

I'm a fixer.

Lance Glinn:

Sure.

Gary Evans:

Firefighter. I'm putting fires out. So, the first really six months to year was putting those fires out, getting the company back into a healthy condition and then China did what it did, which I didn't know. That was a silver platter handed to me. And so, we've taken advantage of that by getting government contracts, getting industrial contracts, building our facilities, and growing our production base.

Lance Glinn:

So, you get thrown into the fire, as you say, right? You come about this role and there's all these different problems as you join the board. Was there ever a hesitation or like a, "Hmm, did I make the right decision," moment for yourself when you first joined and had to deal with all of these issues? Did you say, "Hmm, is this really for me?"

Gary Evans:

I've been a fixer all my life and I never thought, "Oh, I've made a mistake." I thought, "I can fix this." And I was thinking I was going to fix it at $5 antimony and not $30 antimony. So, I always surround myself with really good people. So, one of the first hires I made was our vice president of engineering and I said, "Hey, we got a problem in three plants. Let's fix it." M. Shaw's writing the citations. I'm having to shut down. Efficiencies are horrible." And so, he began that process.

Lance Glinn:

And so, it really is taking it step by step, right?

Gary Evans:

Right.

Lance Glinn:

Looking at the problem first, fixing that and then moving on to the next. And clearly, the results speak for themselves. So, I want to talk more about the company and some of the good things you guys have going on right now. And in early March, you released a new resource study on the Fostung Tungsten Project. At a high level, just what did the results tell you about the size and the potential of that deposit and why just overall is tungsten such an important piece to US Antimony's portfolio moving forward?

Gary Evans:

Tungsten is another critical mineral. I would say it's number two on the critical mineral list. It is used in tanks and submarines. It's a very hard material. It's the second hardest mineral behind diamonds and it is not being mined in the United States or Canada, hasn't been for 12 years.

Another example of China taking control of tungsten, they control 80% of worldwide tungsten drove the price down, drove everybody out of business, and so, our mines shut down. And then, you combine that with the EPA regulations. And miners had a really difficult time for the last 30 years. So, we have some very experienced mining engineers on our board and in senior management that in their 70s and 80s, they've been around this business their whole lives, and they knew where some of these crown jewels of you were laying.

And so, we knew about this project up in Sudbury area of Ontario, Canada. And so, we negotiated with the owners last year, bought it for approximately $5 million and began work on it immediately. And what we liked about it was an open pit, which means that we can move quickly. And so, we got the necessary permits. We cut deals with the First Nations tribes in the area and did enough work that allowed us to get what's called a resource report.

It's a third-party study about nationally known firm that we'll be filing with the SEC probably here in the next week. They're finishing the last touches of the report, but the preliminary report came out showing future net revenues of this particular property of $4.6 billion.

Lance Glinn:

Wow.

Gary Evans:

And if you look at tungsten prices, they have gone just straight up and this because of the shortage apply and there's nothing coming really into the United States. So, we're very excited. We think this will be the first tungsten property back online in 12 years, and we believe the federal government's going to help us fund that as well.

Lance Glinn:

And so, there has been such of a focus on antimony, you're now down the line adding tungsten to that. How do those two things connect in the larger US antimony portfolio? How do both things together fit your broader strategy moving forward?

Gary Evans:

Well, even though we're called US Antimony Corporation, I think you should look at us more as one of the critical mineral companies because we also have cobalt, which is another critical mineral. We have a mine up in Canada we bought near the tungsten mine. We're not as far along on that project. We also have a new play in the Southeast United States that we're still leasing on that we'll be announcing soon.

So, I would say by the end of '26, we'll probably be involved of five or six different critical minerals. These are all critical minerals that we discuss with the Department of War, what we're doing and they're directing us and giving us ideas and how we could possibly get funding. So, this is not blindsided out there just looking for critical minerals. We're really working with different divisions of the government to try to help them.

Lance Glinn:

And I want to talk about that collaboration with the government a little bit later in our conversation, because I think that's a really important piece to the whole grand scheme of everything. But I do want to continue on with another partnership, a JV that you recently entered with America's gold and silver. What was just the strategic rationale around that for you with pandemonium and what convinced you that that was the right vehicle to help scale?

Gary Evans:

We have to go back to really May, June of last year. We were approached by a group out of Canada, some very smart engineers and chemists that had developed a new process called Hydromet. Hydromets have been around forever, but it has never been really developed too much in a commercial scale, and it's a new way to process antimony. Rather than use gas furnaces, it's an electrification process.

And so, they had a pilot project in Bolivia. And the reason they were in Bolivia, is there's a lot of smaller miners and the Bolivian antimony was cheap. And so, they set up shop and proved that they could make what's called antimony flake, which is a processed antimony. It's like 90% antimony.

And we said, "Well, we want to see it at a commercial scale." And they said, "We don't have the money." And I said, "Well, what if I loaned you the money? But for that, I get a license to have this product where I have a license in North America and Australia, and we get all the antimony flake coming out of the new facility we finance." "No problem."

So, we cut a deal, they built it, and it went live about 30 days ago. So, we're starting to receive 150 tons a month of antimony flake for our Thompson Falls facility. But more importantly, we're taking this process that's now proven on a commercial scale and duplicating it in Idaho with America's gold and silver because they have three mines around a silver mine in Idaho that makes silver, copper and antimony. We currently process their antimony, but it goes to a facility in Canada called Trail, and the antimony comes to us as a trisulfide.

And so, we process that and make antimony products. What we're really doing is taking out the middleman. We will now, with our hydromet facility, add America's gold and silver land, which they owned that they've donated to the JV and they were fully permitted. That was a huge deal. That's probably a two to three-year process, fully permitted with the state and with the proper agencies. I think there was 18 permits they had. That goes into JV.

So, we are already, we've had in Toronto last week when we met with the management team there, they have an office in Toronto. Their engineers, our engineers, we all got together in a meeting, we're doing the planning. We should break ground this summer. And it can take us about a year to build it. So, after we've announced that hydromet facility, we've been approached by two other companies that have antimony in the same area go, "Hey, can we bring our antimony to your joint venture?" So, I think this is going to be a bigger plant than we anticipated and it'll be very profitable for both of us.

Lance Glinn:

Bigger than anticipated, but positively bigger...

Gary Evans:

Positively bigger.

Lance Glinn:

... than anticipated. And I guess to that question, whether it's a JV with America's gold and silver, whether it's a project on tungsten that we talked about earlier, it seems like there obviously is this want and this desire, not just from US antimony, but from other companies to help build backup supply in the United States.

Gary Evans:

Absolutely.

Lance Glinn:

How important is that collaborate, that really cross company collaboration to make that happen because US antimony can only do so much, right? To have the entire industry working to do it together, how important is making sure that everyone's aligned in this broader goal?

Gary Evans:

Well, the CEO of Americas Gold and Silver guy named Paul Huet, he would be the first to tell you, "Look, we don't want to be a refinery. We are a miner. We know how to mine. He knows how to mine very well. He's had great success. We want you to refine, we'll mine." So, pick your horse. What are you really good at? We've been refining for 50 years. We got some of the top refiners in the business working for us have been processing antimony.

So, that's what makes a marriage work. We met two months ago. We cut this deal in 35 days and we went and announced it. So, it was a great collaboration between two companies of similar size. They have something we don't have, we have something, they don't have, let's form a joint venture and do it together.

Lance Glinn:

So, I want to turn the conversation more towards that national security point that we were obviously talking about, right? When you work with a department like the Department of War to obviously supply them and to make sure that the public and the private sector are obviously all working in tandem. Obviously, critical minerals that we've been talking about have become a real national security talking point over the last few months and year, but from your seat, what makes antimony just so strategic to defense and industrial capacity?

Gary Evans:

Well, the problem is, as I mentioned earlier, the price was so low that everybody's out of business. So, you can't get domestic antimony today except us and Americas Gold and Silver. We're the only two producing it today. There's more coming three years, four years, five years down the road, but nothing today.

And so, we can fill that gap by buying antimony from Chad, Bolivia, Australia, Peru, Chile, Mexico. We can fill the gap and that's what we're doing. We're buying it from all those countries and having it shipped either to Mexico or to Montana. But I think what our administration wants is to be domestic. We have the minerals, we have the technology and we have the knowhow. And so-

Lance Glinn:

So, there's no reason not to do it here?

Gary Evans:

There's no reason not to be doing it here. I know this administration's trying to reduce the regulatory efforts. I just heard four days ago, the Forest Service was told, you issue permits in 15 days. I know for a fact where we've called the Forest Service and they wouldn't answer the phone for two years. So, it's being mandated from the top down. We got to have these critical minerals and rare earths and the EPA and the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management cannot get in the way.

Now, we have to be good stewards of the land. And I think where I think the mining industry got a bad name, when we dig a ditch looking for antimony, it may be with a backhoe, if we don't find it, we cover it up and replant. I mean, our reclamation is done within days, not years or centuries. I mean, we do it immediately. And so, that makes, I think, us quite a bit different.

Lance Glinn:

Would you say that's the biggest misconception that [inaudible 00:20:27]?

Gary Evans:

Oh, sure. There's a lot of people out there that are environmentalists, conservationists that think the mining industry, all we do is destroy. And if you do things right the way they should be done, that's not the case. We reclaim land and we can't be ignorant that, "Oh, we don't need these minerals."

I mean, right now, we're behind the eight ball because China controls everything and it's not good for our national security. And you're seeing what's going on with the wars in Venezuela and Iran, they're saying on the news, "Hey, we're running out of ammunition." I mean, you don't want to be announcing that.

Lance Glinn:

When we talk about national security and we talk about critical minerals, supply chain resilience, obviously always at the center of the conversation, and from your perspective, as we think about that supply chain, what are the biggest gaps or excuse me, the biggest gaps or vulnerabilities, apologies there, in today's antimony supply chain. And I guess, what would make the biggest difference in ensuring North America's long-term success, that bringing antimony and having it all happen here?

Gary Evans:

Well, one of the biggest problems with dealing with commodities is price fluctuation. I mean, I dealt with it for 38 years in oil and gas. Oil's been as high as 132, down to $11 a barrel. And so, today, I mean, just in the last month, we've seen it go from 40, 50 bucks to over 100. So, we've got to have some form of price stability. We can't allow a country like China or Russia, for that matter, drive the price down of any critical mineral to the point where we're out of business because that's unfair trading practices.

And so, the only way that can be overcome is our government give a price floor, give guarantees, get some base that you know all of a sudden, I'm not dealing with a $5 per pound commodity, I've got a floor of 20. That's what we need. And I think you're seeing that coming.

Lance Glinn:

And as the US and its allies rethink how to secure the supplies of these critical minerals, what kind of collaboration? We talked about collaboration within the industry between company and company, but what kind of collaboration is really needed between companies like US Antimony and the Federal government, and again, the greater defense and technology industries too?

How do all of these different entities work together to make sure that that supply chain is resilient, to make sure that the amount of antimony that is made or produced here continues to grow and grow?

Gary Evans:

Well, there's no question that this administration is trying to push a lot of money into this sector. They have to be careful. I mean, when you try to move this fast, you're going to make some mistakes. We've seen, I could name some mistakes they've already made, but I'm not going to name them. They got to be companies that they feel comfortable or truly taking that money and doing something positive with it that benefits the government.

And so, I do think that these grants are wonderful. We've applied for a $45 million grant with the Department of Energy. That has to do with our hydromet facility we want to build in Radersburg. We're getting ready to file for a $75 billion grant with the Department of War that will be within two weeks. That has to do with the new Americas Gold and Silver joint venture.

With our tungsten play, we're getting ready to file for a [inaudible 00:23:56] grant for 15 million to get things going there. So, all of those monies help us expeditiously move faster. We're a little bit different animal in that we're a public company. We got to do good market cap, good following. We can raise capital, but at the same time, we would do it in a different manner if the government wasn't helping us.

They're helping us jumpstart. They're helping us move faster than we would ordinarily. And that's what the government needs. They want these minerals now. I can't do it all by myself just in the public markets. I got to have some government support.

Lance Glinn:

So, Gary, before we begin wrapping up, I do want to touch on technology and specifically AI. It's impacting and disrupting industries across the business landscape. It frankly is impacting what I do as a podcaster. From podcasting to antimony to sales to software, it's implementing and disrupting everything. Where do you see it making the biggest difference in your workflow and how are things like data and automation really shifting decision making for you?

Gary Evans:

It's a great question, something I've been thinking about for better part of the year. I made a decision to look for what I deemed to be the new upstart AI companies in this space, in the mining space, geologists, engineers that work for an AI company that are focused on mining. I found a couple of them. We've been having a lot of conversations with them and the idea is simple as this, for instance, let's just take our Alaska properties. We have close to 30,000 acres and Alaska has had antimony found for 125 years. It funded the Korean War, the Vietnam War, WW1, and we have all this data.

The antimony was found by gold miners who's out there panning and looking for gold and they find antimony and go, "I don't want that." They go a different direction. But the DNR, which is the Department of Natural Resources in Alaska has all these records that go back to the turn of the century, the 1900s and 1800s. And they have mining logs, they have all kinds of geological work.

And then we have gravity surveys, we have satellite [inaudible 00:26:13], we have Geophysics, we have all this data. And I love my geologist to death. They're great, but they're old school. They're using computers that blow up because they got so much Dagum data on them. And so, I got to thinking there's got to be a better way.

And so, if you take all that magnitude of data, some of which is accessible to the DNR website, put it all together, form a matrix and determine, "Okay, maybe the best spot is right here to start looking, maybe do a drill hole or something. With that data, you recalibrate again. Oh, we were closed, but we weren't disregarded. It's over here." There's got to be a better way with AI and its ability to process this stuff in warp speed than what we've done in the past. That's what I'm striving to do.

So, I have two projects right now that I'm having AI look at and investigate. So, I have a young daughter who's a freshman at a university. I'm telling her, she's majoring computer science to get AI because it's coming. We all know it's coming. And so, we're trying to stay ahead of it.

Lance Glinn:

Some would say it's already here.

Gary Evans:

Pardon?

Lance Glinn:

Some would say it's already here.

Gary Evans:

Oh, it is here, but not necessarily in this space. Different industries is developing. And you're still going to have to have human interface. It's not like they're going to do this on their own, but it allows us to move much, much faster, make more intelligent decisions and change things.

I mean, things happen all the time that cause you to change and you just rerun it, rerun it again, rerun it again or rerun it again. And so, I'm excited about it. I can't wait to see some of the products that'll come out of that.

Lance Glinn:

So, it's coming, right? And as we look to the next three to five years, not necessarily just for AI, but for all the different things taking shape, what does the next chapter look like for US Antimony moving forward?

Gary Evans:

I think what you'll see is companies our size continue to start picking up gyms, little companies that may be on the Vancouver Exchange or Australian Exchange that haven't gotten the market support. Maybe the guys running the company are truly miners are not financial people and they need help. And so, those are the undervalued assets that we're looking to try to assemble, but they have to be something that's interrelated with what we're doing. Is it going to be antimony with gold or is it going to be another, a critical mineral that we deem to be something the Department of War wants?

So, with respect to our capital, the fact that today we're a 1.5 billion market cap, we can raise capital overnight. I'm trying not to do that. I'm trying to get the stock price up higher. We may eventually do another capital raise, but right now, we're flush with cash. We got another big grant. We got more grants coming, so I think we'll be okay on the capital front.

Lance Glinn:

Well, Gary, congratulations on all the success. Thank you so much for joining us Inside the ICE House.

Gary Evans:

Thank you very much for having me today.