Clifton Mining is an American Fork-based company that owns and leases mining claims in the Clifton/Gold Hill district of Utah, about an hour south of Wendover. Clifton doesn't perform any mining themselves, instead they lease out their properties to third parties who do the mining. This analysis is broken down into 3 sections, reflecting three distinct aspects of the business. These are 1)their equity investment in American Silver LLC, 2)their investment in and lease with Desert Hawk Gold Corporation, and 3)their remaining mining claims.

American Silver: American Silver is a company that was founded by Bill Moeller in 1998. Today his son Scott runs the company, and is also CFO and a board member of Clifton Mining. American Silver is a manufacturer of nanosilver products. When silver is melted down into microscopic particles, it has been shown to exhibit antimicrobial properties. Because of this, people for years have been creating products of various uses that are infused with silver particles. According to their website, ABL Manufacturing (a subsidiary of American Silver) is the world's largest manufacturer of liquid nano silver. The company's total sales were around $13.8 million for FY 2025 and $3.6 million for Q1 2026. On those sales, American Silver took home net income of $1.1 million and $205k, respectively. On Amazon, most products on the ABL store get over 4 stars, and their most popular product, the Daily Immune Support Supplement, gets 4.6 stars with ~5.7k ratings. Currently, the main source of cash and income Clifton receives is in the form of distributions from American Silver, in which Clifton owns a 20.7% stake. These distributions totaled $340k for each of 2024 and 2025, and in Q1 26 they received a $92k distribution. See the chart below for the distributions to Clifton over the past 5 fiscal years.

Desert Hawk Gold Corp: Desert Hawk Gold Corp is a gold mining company that has a lease with Clifton that started in 2009. In 2019, the two parties renegotiated the lease and as part of this renegotiation, Clifton gave up its 6% royalty in the production from this land. In return, Desert Hawk issued Clifton 5.5 million shares of stock. Desert Hawk declared bankruptcy in 2024, but came out of bankruptcy in 2025. In 2024, Clifton wrote down the value of their investment in Desert Hawk to $0 on their balance sheet due to this bankruptcy. Even though they came out of bankruptcy in early 2025, Clifton has not yet increased their book value of the Desert Hawk investment above $0 (as of 3/31/26). See the below chart of the book value of the Desert Hawk investment over time.

In April 2025, Clifton annouunced that Desert Hawk had "started mining and loading the heap leach pad once again," and in July they announced that Desert Hawk had "sold just over a half million dollars worth of gold in the last month or so." At the October Clifton shareholders meeting, Michael Marr of Desert Hawk gave a presentation in which he shared a few details about the operations of Desert Hawk. He shared that at the time they were producing around 6 oz of gold per day and aiming to increase that production significantly, to 20 oz per day. Michael also shared that Desert Hawk was profitable in September. Clifton issued a press release on December 18th in which they announced that production had slowed to 4 oz per day and they were trying to resolve the issues causing this. Using the current price of gold of $4,090 (as of close on 6/11/26), this production amounts to $16.4k per day, currently, $24.5k if they are able to return to 6 oz per day, and $81.8k per day at their production goal. In the December 18th press release, they also announced that they are "working with a buyer that made an offer on ownership interest in DHGC."

As of 6/30/25, Clifton owned a 17.5% stake in Desert Hawk (they don't disclose their ownership percentage in subsequent reports).

Additional Mining Claims: Clifton has the following mining claims. They have a total of 402 unpatented lode claims, 32 unpatented placer claims, 7 state mineral leases and 82 patented claims. In total, these claims span 14,667 acres of land. The Desert Hawk lease ties up 10 of the patented claims and 66 of the unpatented lode claims, spanning 1,475 acres. So the company has a lot of land that could be leased out to other mining companies. They are currently attempting to do so with much of their land. Ken Friedman, the president of the company, seemed enthusiastic at the October shareholders meeting about the prospect of leasing out some of this land. He mentioned that they have had conversations with multiple different parties interested in this, although no deals had been consummated at the time. This interest, according to Friedman, is due to the recent strength in precious metals prices. The below chart shows the price increases in Gold and Silver over the past year.

These price trends in precious metals are encouraging for both the Desert Hawk investment and the additional mining claims that Clifton owns. Clifton does have preoperty reports listed on their website which show estimates of the amounts of different minerals that exist on the Clifton properties. See the below table from the Shear Zone Summary report available on their website. Note that 'opt' stands for ounces per ton, so if you multiply the opt number by the amount of tons, you get the number of ounces for that mineral.

Also note that this report is just for Clifton Shear Zone, which is one of the company's properties. This property spans 4,073 acres, according to the report. This is just over a quarter of Clifton's total 14,667 acres. While the other properties don't have as detailed reports, we can assume that they have some amount of minerals. In summary, Clifton has additional mining claims that are not currently being worked on, but if they are able to make a deal for these properties, they have an opportunity for an additional revenue stream.

Clifton has very few liabilites, and no debt, which gives them a very healthy balance sheet in terms of liquidity and solvency. At the end of Q1, they had just $4.6k in current liabilities and $76.6, in total liabilities. However, due to a lack of income besides that from American Silver (so far, not enough to cover their expenses), the cash position has slowly deteriorated over the past few years. At the end of 2020, the cash position was $3 million, and at the end of Q1 26 it was $1.23 million. Free Cash Flow has averaged negative $296k since 2021, but has trended upward in the past couple years as distributions from American Silver have increased and operating expenses have decreased.

So while there is no need for immediate concern about Clifton's financial health, it is important that they start to make income through an increase in receipts from one of their three sources.

The book value of Clifton's equity was $4.2 million at the end of Q1 26 which, with a stock price of $.19 (closing price on 6/11/26) and $55 million shares outstanding, gives it a price-to-book ratio of 2.5. In comparison, the TUI index median price-to-book ratio is 1.75.