Vista Gold Corp (VGZ) April 2026 Conference Transcript

Welcome back, everyone. Next, we have Vista Gold Corp. It trades on the New York Stock Exchange American under the symbol VGZ and on the TSX under the symbol VGZ. It holds the Mount Todd Gold Project, a leading development stage gold deposit located in the Tier 1 mining jurisdiction of Northern Territory Australia, which offers strong project economics, significant initial production, and compelling expansion and exploration upside. Happy to welcome its CEO, Fred Ernest. Nice to see you today, Fred. We're very much looking forward to your presentation.

It's great to be here. Thanks, Anna. Well, as you introduce, we have the Mount Todd Gold Project in the Northern Territory of Australia. Today, I'd like to cover a couple of topics. One is to introduce the Mount Todd Project to those who may not be familiar with the project. Second of all, to provide a brief update on the financial health of Vista Gold and allay any concerns about whether we have the resources to be able to accomplish what we've set out. And then third, to discuss how our continued disciplined execution will lead to the realization of value for our shareholders. I am going to be making some forward-looking statements as we talk about things this morning. But let's just move on. The Mount Todd Gold Project is located in the Northern Territory of Australia. As you see in the map on the right-hand side, it's located in what the Australians call the top end of Australia, the very northern part of the Northern Territory. It's quite accessible by Australian standards. We're about three hours south of Darwin, about 30 minutes north of a regional commerce centre named Catherine. And we're 10 kilometres off the Stuart Highway. So we have very easy access to the project. Our focus, as I mentioned, is realizing value for shareholders through discipline execution. We have a project that is among the largest development state projects in Australia. Last year, we completed a feasibility study on a 15,000 ton per day operation, which confirmed the economics. And at the same time, at that scale, preserves the expansion optionality. We're going to talk a little bit about our work programs for this year and how they're designed to lead us to the start of detailed engineering and design in 2027. We continue to execute on an independent development strategy, but are open to a strategic transaction at the appropriate valuation. I think the most important thing for shareholders to know in this introduction is that we are driving outcomes to achieve the producer re-rating. And we think that there's a couple of ways for that to happen. Now, I'm going to digress for just a moment and talk about, as I promised, the financial health of the company. Earlier in March, we completed a public offering. We raised $44.85 million. You see on this slide that we now have 144.9 million shares issued and outstanding. Today, our share price is $2.12 and gives us a market cap of about $305 million U.S. On a pro forma basis at the completion of the financing, we had about $55.5 million in cash. So we have the resources to be able to undertake all of the activities that I'm going to talk about. very pleased to be in that position. There have been new shareholders added to our register, and in the coming months, as people file their reporting forms, we'll be able to add to this list. But you see that Coppernet Global Investors now tops our list with 5.8% of his shares. Vista's board and management presently hold 3.2%. And then you see some of the others. So let's jump back to the project, and I'm not going to try and give an exhaustive discussion of the feasibility study results or the technical aspects of the project. Those are all found on our website at www.vistagold.com. But just to highlight, the feasibility study accomplished a couple of things for us. One, by reducing the initial scale of the project, we were able to reduce the initial capex for the project and it's now estimated to be 425 million dollars we raised the cutoff grade this resulted in a raise of our an increase of our reserve grade and we now have an average grade of reserves to feed to the mill over the first 15 years of a 30-year mine life of 1.04 grams per ton and that's up from a deposit average of 0.77 grams per ton previously the combination of the scale the grade that we've just talked about, allow us to have a production profile that's actually very constant, very close to 153,000 ounces of gold per year over the first half of the life of the project. With these changes, we now report 5.2 million ounces of proven and probable mineral reserves, our total resource of 10.6 million ounces. Over 9 million ounces of that is classified as measured and indicated. The balance is inferred. The economics of the project were evaluated at $2,500 gold price. The gold price is very conservative compared to today's gold price. And it estimated an after-tax NPV at a 5% discount rate of $1.1 billion and an after-tax IRR of 27.8%. Now, if we look at what those numbers are at a modest increase of $3,300 an ounce per ounce of gold, We see that the NPV doubles to $2.2 billion, and the after-tax IRR goes to almost 45%, demonstrating the very strong leverage that we have to the price of gold. Now, many people ask about what are our costs, our life of mine, all-in sustaining costs are estimated to be just a little less than $1,500 an ounce. Over the first 15 years of the project, they're just shy of $1,450. So these are very solid, middle-of-the-pack Australian operating costs. I'd love to be able to say that they're lowest quartile. They're not, but we're very confident in the numbers based on the very qualified and well-experienced group of engineers in Australia that we put together to complete this study. So what are the catalysts for the next 6 to 12 months? You know, we talk about, you know, disciplined execution. Well, the things that we're working on and that we're completing right now are all designed to lead to the start of detail engineering and design in 2027. We are completing some pre-development optimizations. These are studies that were recommended in the feasibility study. Metallurgical testing, the drilling has been completed. The core has been gathered and logged, and it's being shipped to the assay lab. The geotechnical study that we hope will result in a steepening of the pit wall on the west side of the pit and a reduction in stripping, which will ultimately aid and improve project economics. We're waiting for the drill rig to show up on site right now to be able to commence that. We've started project execution planning, and this is an important part of the development of any project, is the planning that goes on before you actually start moving dirt and spending money on detailed engineering. And so we've already commenced that. Another important aspect of what we're doing this year is modifying the permits. All of our existing permits were based on designs of the project going back to the large scale that we were looking at in 2018. Since that point in time, we've completed four drilling programs. We've changed our understanding of the resource, the ore body and we've also today have much better gold price and so economics are different the pit design is different and so we are updating all of those permits to align with the 2025 feasibility study and in a moment i'll talk about what the timeline is for that and then last uh is and maybe this is one of the more important things is that we're expanding our australian based team. We have been, since the first of the year, building an Australian based executive and project development team. The executive team will be a small group. They'll be based in Perth and we'll be building more of an operational center of excellence and team in the Northern Territory. So that work has already started. We've made a few announcements. There will be more announcements to come as the year goes on. The outcome of this, and I hope that this really sinks in with people, is that the objective of all of this in advancing Mount Todd is to achieve a re-rating that comes with transitioning from being a developer to becoming a producer. This chart just simply shows you how we stack up today as a developer compared to the junior gold producers that would be our peers at this 15,000 ton per day project size. And you see that we have a larger reserve than any of them. We have gold production that will be higher than almost any of them. Capricorn is in the midst of an expansion, and they'll be about our same annual production, and yet our market cap is way below, and so as we transition from being a developer to becoming a producer, we expect to see a significant re-rating, and immediately we would hope to be valued something in the order of the valuation that Catalyst Metals or Bellevue receives, but longer term and aspirationally, our goal is to achieve a valuation more in line with Capricorn Metals. That's the value proposition that we're presenting in the work that we're undertaking. Now, many people ask, how long is this permitting stuff going to take? And we decided to put in a new slide in this deck just to kind of answer that question. You know, there's work that's already commenced. Applications have already been submitted and they're being reviewed. First of all is we require an additional Aboriginal Area Protection Authority certificate. We already have two, one for the mining license as a whole and one for the exploration licenses. But our mining license authorization requires an expansion on the west side. We've filed for that. We're working with the Jawan Aboriginal people. And we expect that by early to mid Q3 that we'll have that authorization in place. There's been changes in the legislation. We're in the process of converting our, what used to be a mining management plan is now called a deemed environmental license to our environmental mining license. And we think that we'll have that by mid-year. That'll be followed by the amendment of our environmental impact statement and the amendment of that environmental mining license to align it with the designs of the new feasibility study. And then the other longer term permitting act that's already commenced, and it will culminate sometime in the middle part of 2027, is the authorization of our federal permit, which is an authorization under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. There will be news on all of these permits as the year goes on, and I think that it'll be very exciting for all of you to see the evolution of the permitting process. So why Mount Todd? You know, we get asked that question a lot. It's not the center of the universe being in the Northern Territory, but it's in a great jurisdiction. And quite honestly, development stage projects like this appeal to investors and strategic partners for a number of reasons. One is that there's a scarcity of large deposits in Tier 1 mining jurisdictions, and Australia certainly ticks that box. Many of those who have taken a look or are looking at Mount Todd from a strategic point of view just say it's simply too big to ignore. 10 million ounces is a large deposit in today's gold mining industry. And there's opportunity for resource growth. You know, this is not the end of what's to be discovered. We believe that there's tremendous opportunity to expand in the vicinity of the pit, as well as district scale exploration potential. While we've evaluated the project at a smaller initial scale of 15,000 tons per day, we've preserved the flexibility to either start the project at that scale or to reconsider the large scale that we've evaluated in the past. At a smaller scale, we've designed it for future expansion. And this optionality provides options to deliver ample production for a partner in the event that we go down that path. Half of, say, 50% of 150,000 ounces per year may not be very appealing, but within one or two expansions, we could be talking 300,000 or 400,000 ounces of gold per year being produced at Mount Todd. And so that provides a basis, a quantum of balances that actually adds to the balance sheet and makes us a very attractive project for potential partners. So to just kind of wind things up so that we can get on to Q&A, and I know there's many people that have questions. You know, again, I just want to reiterate that we're focused on acting in a disciplined way with a focus on value realization. We've designed the project as an Australian project with the goal of near-term production. As I indicated, we're focused on advancing this on a standalone basis, but at the right valuation, we will consider a strategic transaction that would move the project forward as well. So we are completing the pre-development optimizations that will lead us ultimately to the start of front-end engineering design and ultimately to the start of detailed engineering and design in 2027. We've talked about project economics and grade and production profile and how this all plays into having a project that is, one, achievable from a construction and development point of view, but from another point of view, it's sustainable from a revenue generation perspective. We talked about the leverage to the gold price, and certainly with today's gold price being north of $4,700 an ounce, the numbers that we're looking here at the bottom of this slide are even more tremendous. And so we continue to press forward, maintaining optionality, acting in a disciplined way with ultimately our goal on value realization for shareholders. I hope that with this brief presentation that you understand a little bit better about where we're headed. And with that, Anna, let's go to questions from our viewers today.

Perfect. Thank you so much. I want you to talk a little bit about uniqueness and how unique is Mount Todd Gold Project globally. And like you mentioned, more or less 9.1 million ounces of resources and about 5.2 million ounces of reserves. How does this rank versus peer projects?

You know, like I said, the number of projects of this scale are limited on a global basis. Mount Todd is within the 30 largest projects in the world. And it's one of the, like I said, it's one of the largest undeveloped gold projects in Australia. When we start to look at tier one jurisdictions with, you know, established mining cultures and laws and, you know, the ease of being able to build a project, Mount Todd moves up the list significantly. And so, while it's not the only large-scale gold project out there, it's one of five or ten that are located in great jurisdictions that have the scale and the development opportunities in the infrastructure that we enjoy at Mt. Todd.

Perfect. And let's talk about its competitive edge.

Can you talk about that grade, scale, and cost structure? yeah so uh you know what by by raising the cutoff grade and and and taking that that material that was between 0.35 and 0.5 grams per ton and putting that in a in the in the waste in the corner of the waste rock dump for processing at some point in time in the future we've been able to to raise the the the near-term grade and you know for for the purpose of the feasibility study We've grazed the grade of all of the reserves. You know, we look at gold producers around the world and there's things like the Boddington Operation in southwestern Australia, Detour Lake, that are producing a lot of ounces, mining a reserve that's lower grade than what we're now using at Mount Todd. So by raising the grade, we put ourselves in a very competitive end with regards to grade. Given the fact that Mount Todd is a project that operated previously, we enjoy grade infrastructure. We have paved roads to the site already. We have a natural gas pipeline that we'll use to generate power for the site. We have a power line to the site that provides all of our power and will provide construction power. We have a freshwater storage reservoir, the tailing storage facility. So there's some of those infrastructure items that give us a very distinct advantage. Efficiency of capital, we're on the lower end of that scale with a capex of $425 million to produce 5 million ounces. You know, that's another very attractive part of the project as well.

And can you talk about the long-term mine life and expansion potential?

Yeah, so with this change to a smaller scale project, we recognize that at some point Mount Todd is going to be expanded. And we kind of look at it, there's two classic examples in the industry as to how and when that should happen. On one hand, we have Artemis Gold, who said from the very start, we're going to build a project, year three, we're going to expand it, and then in year seven, we're going to double that. And then on the other end of the scale, we have Capricorn Metals in Australia that said, we're going to build a project that's 120,000 ounce of gold per year, and we'll expand it when the market conditions justify. It's really hard to say what the market is going to be five or seven years from now. And so we've opted the option that was presented by Capricorn's experience. We've designed the project so that there's ample room to expand the plant. We don't know if that expansion will be taking it from 15,000 tons a day to 22,500 to 30,000 or maybe 45,000 tons a day. But we've allowed the space for that to happen, and we recognize that it will happen. And that will directly impact the life of the mine. Today, the life is 30 years with the known resource and reserve. as as economics change a continued and sustained a strong gold price environment you know we could we could add reserves we could we could do a lot of things that will change life but you know we recognize that there will be an expansion that will affect life of the project and then there will be a tremendous effort put into exploration on on our exploration licenses and we think ultimately that this will have a a mine life that even at a much larger scale may be beyond 30 years And in addition to the final permits, added financing and engineering, what else would be needed prior to construction? Well, you've really just named the list. You know, getting the major permits modified and aligned with the current designs is one. um obviously completing some of these front-end engineering and and and and other studies to position the project project execution planning and and then ultimately the the project financing itself once all of those things are completed we will be in a position to commence detail engineering design place long late time items and commence construction and now previously management stated you were open to a joint venture or strategic alliance uh are you still or has that changed no we continue to be open to that idea the uh the maybe the changes is that we have uh come to the realization through the studies that we've completed and the other evaluations that we've undertaken that this is a project at this scale that we can build ourselves And so we're no longer dependent on having a partner or another transaction to be able to advance Mount Todd. And so the difference is that we're moving down a path to do this on our own, but should the opportunity present itself in a way that will recognize the value of Mount Todd and reward our shareholders, we continue to be open-minded to a form of a strategic transaction, whether that's a joint venture or a corporate transaction.

And with that said, could a major gold producer acquire Mount Todd? And if so, what valuation would justify a sale?

Certainly, you know, the old saying, everything's for sale at a price. That's no different with Mount Todd. You know, should somebody decide that they would rather acquire the project and undertake a transaction on a corporate level rather than farm in and form a joint venture? at the at the right valuation that will that will be considered uh you know obviously we just raised money at uh at two dollars and fifty cents a share in the first part of march uh we as an industry have seen a bit of a uh drawback in in all of our prices uh we would we would expect to see a a very reasonable premium to that offering price before we would consider something to be interesting

And talk a little bit about your management team and some of their qualities.

Yeah, boy, this is a fun one for me. Actually, we've got a great team. Just, you know, starting in our Denver office, Doug Tobler, our CFO, is a mining CFO. He's worked for a number of mining companies before, gold mining companies before joining Vista. He's raised and arranged bank financing and participated in equity financing and totaling in the billions of dollars that he's helped raise for other projects around the world. And so he's a very seasoned mining CFO and very familiar with what it takes to raise money. We have, you know, Pam Sully, our VP of Investor Relations, who does a great job engaging with the marketplace and shareholders and stakeholders. In Australia, some of the team members that we've recently brought on, Jeff Dang has been hired as our executive general manager of projects and technical services. And Jeff comes from a background in Australia of building and developing and leading the efforts of discovering deposits and new mines. And so we're very happy to have him on board as a project development expert. We've hired Sharon Goddard as our executive general manager, external relations and social performance. And Sharon comes from a background of being able to very adeptly and strongly engage with local stakeholders, local communities. She led an effort at her previous employer to get them listed on the Russell Environmental Index, and they're one of just a couple of companies in Australia that achieve that. And that's one of our aspirations is to get to that point that we're also listed on or included in that index and recognized for our social performance. And I think that those two initial hires certainly highlight the focus and the priority that we're placing on project advancement and doing it in a way that we recognize the needs of our stakeholders and communities. For myself, I'm a mining engineer who grew up in this industry. My father was a mining engineer before me. I have spent most of my career in the gold sector, been involved in the construction of new operations, the turnaround of operations that weren't performing as they should have been. And I'm certainly excited to have been part of getting Mount Todd to the point that we are today.

Perfect. And is there exploration upside beyond current reserves?

There's a tremendous exploration upside beyond current reserves. Right now, all of our exploration money and all of our resources has been spent within the roughly 56 square kilometers that constitutes the mining licenses at Mount Todd. We have surrounding that, and most particularly to the north, we have almost 1,600 square kilometers of exploration licenses where we've identified at least 30 targets that our geologists would like to drill. I've jokingly told others that if someone were to give us $50 million and told us that we could only spend it on exploration, that our geologists already have the program lined out on where they would spend that money, and it's already prioritized. So we think that there's tremendous opportunity for an increase in reserves, both in the area and the vicinity of the Batman deposit, as we trend north toward the Quigley's satellite deposit, and then farther north on our exploration licenses.

Perfect. And could phased expansion significantly increase output?

That would be the whole idea. The grade of Mount Todd is pretty consistent. And so taking the process facility and expanding it from 15,000 tons a day to, let's say, 30,000 tons a day would be expected to take average annual production from the range of 150,000 ounces a year to something closer to 300,000 ounces a year. And that would, you know, that same relationship would hold not quite to the same scale if we were to take it to 45,000 tons a day. We probably wouldn't reach 450,000 ounce a year. It'd probably be closer to 400. But that would be the idea in the expansion would be to take advantage of the economies of scale that come from larger operations and produce more ounces at a lower cost.

And is there yet a target date to begin processing pay material?

You know, right now, if we were to lay out our best case scenario, we would hope to be in a position, as I've shown from the permitting set of slides, to start detailed engineering and design sometime mid-2027. We believe that we're looking at a roughly 27-month process to start engineering, design, start construction, and get to the point of first gold pour. So if we were able to achieve that, we'd be looking at sometime in the latter part of 2029 to achieve first gold production.

Perfect. Thank you so much, Fred. Ed, very great presentation as always, and we appreciate your time, and we would love to follow along with you as you come into this year.

Well, I look forward to it. Thanks for having me on today.

All right, everyone, we'll be right back with our next presenter.