Vista Gold Corp. (VGZ) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to today's virtual non-deal road show. My name is Julia Perron, a virtual event moderator here at Renmark Financial Communications. On behalf of our team, we'd like to thank everyone in Chicago and surrounding areas for joining us today for the presentation of Vista Gold Corp., trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol VGZ and on the NYSE American under the ticker symbol VGZ. Presenting today is Frederick Earnest, Chief Executive Officer and Director. The presentation will last approximately 20 to 25 minutes and will be followed by a formal Q&A session [Operator Instructions]. And with that, I will hand it over to Fred.

Thank you, Julia, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for your patience where we resolved some technical difficulties. But I'm appreciative of your interest, and I'm happy to have this opportunity to talk to you about Vista Gold and our Mt Todd gold project. I will be making some forward-looking statements. I encourage you to become familiar with the content of this. You'll notice on the right side of this slide, there's a brief summary of some of the capital markets information. As Julia indicated, we trade on the NYSE American and the Toronto Stock Exchanges under the symbol VGZ. We have about 122 million shares issued and outstanding, a market cap of approximately USD 95 million, $20 million in cash at the end of the second quarter and no debt. You see our -- some of our largest shareholders listed at the bottom. Today, we're going to talk about what we are doing at Vista Gold to build value based on the strengths of the Mt Todd gold project, where we have demonstrated technical and financial strength through the completion of a feasibility study for a large-scale development scenario. Recently, we've completed a scoping study that shows the advantages of starting at a lower initial throughput rate and production rate with significantly lower initial CapEx. The end of the year, we expect to start a feasibility study for a project that will contemplate something in the order of 4 million to 6 million tonnes per year of throughput; 150,000 to 200,000 ounces of gold production per year, and we're targeting an initial CapEx of less than $400 million. We're targeting and we're positioning Mt Todd as a leading development opportunity. And I'll talk a little bit more about what that means. And at the same time, exercising the discipline necessary to best realize value at the right time. And that's an important part of what I hope you take away from our discussion this morning. Now briefly to set the stage the large-scale feasibility study that we completed, some of the results are shown there across the top of this slide. We have 9.4 million ounces of total resource; 7.8 million ounces are classified as measured and indicated. We have a 7 million-ounce reserve. The project is designed at 17.5 million tonnes per year or 50,000 tonnes per day. It generates a mine life of 16 years. Average annual production over the first half of the life of the project is 479,000 ounces of gold per year at an all-in sustaining cost of $961 an ounce. Now the project is located in the extremely mining-friendly jurisdiction of the Northern Territory of Australia. And you see a map on the right side of the slide that shows its location relative to Australia and the Northern Territory. We're in what the Australians call the top end of Australia, the very northern part of the Northern Territory, where the project is located about 250 kilometers southeast of the capital and port city of Darwin, 10 kilometers east of the Stuart Highway, which is a paved road that connects Darwin on the North Coast to Adelaide on the south coast of the continent. We have just a very easy access. The feasibility study was completed at a gold price of $1,800 an ounce and a $0.69 foreign exchange rate. At those rates, the after-tax NPV of the project was estimated to be $1.1 billion. If we look at the gold price today, the NPV is estimated to be 2.9 million -- or $2.9 billion at a $2,500 gold price and $3.1 billion at a $2,600 gold price. As I indicated, we're evaluating and preparing to commence a feasibility study that will evaluate a development scenario that will be a fraction of the size of the large case, with production in the range of 150,000 to 200,000 ounces of gold per year. Now this is still -- while our large case, the large-scale scenario is a very large project, would be the third to fifth largest gold producer in Australia, 150,000 to 200,000 ounces of gold per year would still place it in the top 12 gold producers in the country. So it still would be a very respectable size gold project. In a moment, I'll talk about some of the infrastructure that we enjoy on site. We are -- we see opportunities for resource expansion, both to the north extensions of the Batman deposit and adjacent mineral structures. And then we have a very large exploration land package that I'll talk about towards the end. I just want to note and draw your attention to the fact that we enjoy strong stakeholder support. That's both from the local communities and from the aboriginal people, the Jawoyn people who uniquely own the surface land in the area of the project, and we have an agreement with them that provides us with access to the mining licenses and the exploration licenses. And in return, they have a small degree of project participation. And so there's a financial benefit for them. Now moving on. I talked about infrastructure, all the -- this is a brownfield site. This project operated in the 1990s. You see in the picture on this slide, the Batman pit off to the left, that's the pit that was mined previously. The deposit that we have expanded is the Batman deposit. It underlies that pit and extends to the north. The mineralized zone is -- varies width between 200 to 300 meters. It has a strike length of 1.6 kilometers, and we've drilled it out to 600 meters in depth below the surface. This is a very large project. In addition to the deposit itself, you see some of the existing infrastructure. The tailings storage facility is -- has capacity for 90 million tonnes, which is approximately 1/3 of the reserve. We'll have to build an additional tailings storage facility. You see the freshwater storage reservoir. We capture water during the wet season and store it for use during the dry season. There's -- what you don't see is there's a paved road that connects the plant site to the Stuart Highway. There's a power line to the site that provides power for all of our present water management and environmental stewardship obligations. It will provide power during the construction phase of the project. We intend to use a natural gas pipeline that runs all the way to the plant site to generate our own electricity for the operation itself. And the reason is that we can generate power using natural gas much cheaper than we can buy it from the grid. And also, we expect that, that power will be more reliable. And so there's significant advantages in the investments that have been made by previous operators. Obviously, we benefit from those investments in infrastructure from the point of view of capital expenditures and also reduce construction time, and we think that those are significant advantages for us. Now I think there are perhaps 3 reasons why an investment in Vista Gold should be, at least, the least interesting to you. First of all, if we look at gold price, share price performances over a running 2-year period, the chart on the right demonstrates what that performance has been for the period, the 2 years prior to August 26. And what you see is over that 2-year period that the gold price is up approximately 50%. Senior producers, the aqua-colored balls on the right side of the chart, on average, were up 87%. Producers -- or I'm sorry, developers like Vista Gold, on average, were down 7% over the same period of time. Now at August 26, we were up 30%. Today, with the rise in gold price above $2,600, we're up about 70%. And that just demonstrates our leverage to the gold price. But first of all, the point I'm trying to make is that we believe that developers are, as a group, are lagging the gold price. And that in time that this will be corrected, that there will be an adjustment here. Vista will benefit from that along with other developers. But in the meantime, I think there's an important point to be made, and that is that we have considerable leverage to the gold price. Second of all -- and so the chart on this page summarizes some data published by S&P Global Market Intelligence, in which they summarize the number of major deposit discoveries year-by-year. We've compiled this by decades. And what you see -- and with their definition of a major discovery is a deposit that either resources, reserves and/or past production totals more than 2 million ounces. So in the last decade of the 1990s, there were 181 discoveries. In the first decade of this century, 2000 to 2009, were approximately 120. In the second decade, the period of time from 2010 to 2019, there were less than 50. And since 2020, there have been only 5 discoveries that have been larger than 2 million ounces. So what does that mean? Well, as an industry we're producing roughly 3,000 tonnes of gold per year. But we're not finding the major discoveries to offset that. Now there are expansions at existing operations. We acknowledge that. But those can't go on forever. And we believe that what this says is that the scarcity of new discoveries will ultimately result in producers having a greater focus on optimizing existing projects and acquiring advanced stage projects like Mt Todd. The benefits of shovel-ready projects like Mt Todd are demonstrated feasibility, lower risk because of things like permits already being acquired, and a faster path to production. We believe that this will drive greater or higher valuations, improved valuations for developers with well-advanced projects like Vista with its Mt Todd project. We'd expect that there will be a shift in M&A activity from producers acquiring producers to producers beginning to acquire developers. And our aim is to position Mt Todd to be one of the leading development opportunities at that point in time. Now third, and I've already kind of alluded to this in the first point, we -- first of all, we at Vista Gold believe that we're in the midst of a strong and rising gold price environment. We all recognize that in the last week or so, there's been a little bit of a pullback with some of the recently announced economic data. We believe this is temporary, that this doesn't change our view on the fact that we're in a strong gold price and a rising gold price environment. As we indicated, there's -- at the start, I talked about the economics of the large-scale project at 2 gold prices. And one is the base study price at $1,800 gold price and now talking about at a $0.68 foreign exchange rate was just closer to what the exchange rate is today. The after-tax NPV5 of the project at $1,800 is $1.2 billion; at today's gold price of $2,600, it's $3.1 billion. And so this demonstrates that there's considerable leverage to the gold price. Now I don't know where the gold price is going to end up, but let's say that it does get to $3,000 in the near term. At that gold price, the NPV5 on an after-tax basis, the Mt Todd gold project becomes $4 billion. What we've seen in the last 3 days with the change in our gold price or in the change of our share price as the gold prices crossed the $2,600 price, I think will be magnified, and you'll see a tremendous increase in the price of the value of Vista shares. These -- I think that these 3 factors, one, that there's a structural lag between developers and the gold price that will correct itself. Second, at some point, producers have got to start looking at advanced stage, shovel-ready projects like Mt Todd. That will increase demand for projects like Mt Todd. Coupled with the gold price environment that we're in, we believe that these factors are going to drive a significant change in the value of Vista Gold. And I think that these are 3 reasons why you should be looking at Vista Gold as an investment in your portfolio. Now no discussion about a mining company would be complete, and certainly we wouldn't feel ours would be complete, without a brief discussion about our commitment to sustainable and socially responsible development. On the environmental side, we have an outstanding reputation in the Northern Territory. We have successfully treated and discharged over 11 million cubic meters of acidic rock drainage. The waste rock dump that you saw in the previous picture generates acid rock drainage every wet season. And we manage that, we treat it. We discharge it as clean water. All of the major permits for the development of Mt Todd are already approved. Our EIS has been approved. We have a federal environmental authorization under the Environmental Protection Biodiversity Conservation Act that's approved. Our mining management plan, which is the same as mine operating permit in North America, has been approved. And so we are essentially in a position where with a decision to advance the project to construction, we could commence demolition of old facilities within a month or two's time from that decision and commence construction. And so this project truly is a shovel-ready project with the permits needed to be able to commence construction. Now on the social side and then a little bit bridges into operational. Our team has successfully achieved over 1,000 consecutive days without a lost time accident. Safety -- the safety and well-being of our workforce and the surrounding community is a very high priority for us. Our relationships with the community are equally high priority for us, and we have a strong relationship with the Jawoyn Aboriginal People. In the picture that we looked at, they own all of that surface land. And we work with them closely in our portion of the management of that land and the care for that land. We enjoy strong support across a broad range of stakeholders in the communities of Katherine and Pine Creek and in the Northern Territory. And on the governance side, we're committed to the best practices across the board, and there's just a number of things there that you can read that we've accomplished. With regards to exploration upside, I mean, we already have 9.4 million ounces of resource and 7 million ounces of reserves. And all of those resources and reserves are located inside the boundaries of this red box. This is the boundaries of our mining licenses. Outside of that and surrounding that -- those mining licenses, we have almost 1,600 square kilometers of exploration licenses. Our exploration licenses are located at the southeast end of the Pine Creek gold district. It's a district that's produced gold for over 100 years. Our licenses cover over half of the Pine Creek Geosyncline, a structure that's known to be associated with gold mineralization. We control 2 structural corridors: the southernmost, anchored by the Batman deposit; at the southwest end is the Batman-Driffield trend. And that extends approximately 15 kilometers to the northeast from the Batman deposit. And then further to the north, we have the Cullen Australis Trend. These are structural corridors that have been prepped and they're already known to host mineral deposits, including gold and other minerals. And we think that there's tremendous exploration upside on this land package. We, to date, have spent almost all of our exploration dollars exploring and adding ounces to resources within the mining licenses. We've identified through grassroots exploration activities which are ongoing and undertaken every year, a number of targets, a number of known occurrences in soil samples and outcrops. And we think that with the appropriate expenditures, which would likely amount to something in the range of $20 million to $50 million spread over a period of time with consistent expenditures each year, that there will be the discovery of another deposit or 2 on this land package. So we're very optimistic. Within the mining licenses themselves, we've identified targets that our geologists estimate have the potential to add another 1.8 million to 3.5 million ounces of gold resource to our resource base. And that drilling will take place at some point in the future. And so we're very excited about the upside potential. But right now, we're focused on what we have at Mt Todd. So to wind things up and get to the question-and-answer, which is perhaps the more interesting part of these calls, let me just summarize and reinforce some of the things that I've already told you. First of all, we're positioning Mt Todd as a leading Tier 1 development opportunity. Mt Todd is a large, high-quality gold deposit in one of the most attractive mining jurisdictions in the world. The present reserves are 280 million tonnes with an average grade of 0.77 grams per tonne. We've completed a feasibility study. I've talked to you about the results of that at the scale of 50,000 tonnes per day. We are looking at starting a feasibility study for a project that would be smaller, 4 million to 6 million tonnes per year or 12,000 to 17,000 tonnes per day that would have an initial CapEx of less than $400 million compared to a CapEx of over $1 billion for the large scale. Production would be, we're targeting 150,000 to 200,000 ounces of gold per year, and we believe that's easily achievable based on the results of the scoping study that was completed 1.5 years ago. We will be raising the cutoff grade for the project, and that will result in a higher reserve grade. We're targeting a gram per tonne. That will likely reduce the reserve from 7 million ounces to something in the order of in the range of 5.5 million to 6 million ounces. We believe that 5.5 million ounces at a gram per tonne will have greater value in the marketplace than the larger reserve. We will continue to use and incorporate elements of the design that reduce risk, such as contract mining and third-party power generation. We believe based on the results of the scoping study that the smaller-scale project will retain attractive economics. And at the same time as we evaluate a smaller-scale project, we will preserve the optionality for expansion at a future date. We believe that Mt Todd is especially attractive as a shovel-ready development stage project in the current strong gold pricing environment that we see. We -- as I indicated, we believe that diminishing major projects or major deposit discoveries is going to shift the paradigm in the industry. It's going to push the pendulum back to producers looking at developers such as Vista Gold, and we believe that this will be value-creating for our shareholders. Last of all, we are exercising the disciplined approach to best realize value at the right time. To simply put it, our largest shareholders who've told us not being early to do a bad deal. And we're in a position where we have the cash in hand to be able to do exactly that. We believe that the feasibility study that we're going to start later this year will be something that will help us demonstrate value at an initial -- smaller initial capital that will help us create value and realize value at the appropriate time. And we believe that the gold price is going to continue to rise. All of these things, we believe, will create greater value for Vista's shareholders. So with that, let me just stop talking. And Julia, I'll be happy to answer any questions from those on the call.

Thank you, Fred, for the presentation. As mentioned, we will start the Q&A. Your first question for today, a viewer is asking, "What was the average grade from the Phase 2 interim results?"

Well, average grade on drill holes is a pretty hard number to talk about at this early stage. We -- I think the important answer to that question is that as we drill the Phase 2 drill program, we're drilling what we call the South Cross Lode. It's a different geologic structure than what we see in the Batman deposit. The Batman deposit is a sheeted vein system. It's hosted by a highly silicified package of fine-grained sentiments: stones, shales and graywackes, that was shattered and subsequently filled -- the fractures were filled with quartz and calcite and sulfide minerals. The vein densities inside of that deposit, and this is over a 200- to 300-meter width, the vein thicknesses are 1 millimeter to 10 centimeters. And they occur -- we might see 7 to 20 veins per meter across that 200- to 300-meter width. In the South Cross Lode, we're seeing rock that's not as altered. It's farther away from the heat source. And the veins that we're seeing are further apart, like sometimes tens of meters apart, but they tend to be thicker. We've seen vein packages that vary in widths from 0.5 meter to 4 to 8 meters. Some of the results that we announced in the interim drill results announcement, they showed, for example, 0.5 meter at 50 grams of gold per tonne. We had another intercept 50 meters away in another drill hole that was 1 meter of 25.89. We've had, I don't remember the exact number, a couple of meters of 12.5 grams per tonne. We've had intercepts that are running 12 meters at 2 grams per tonne. I mean we're looking at different style of mineralization that has greater consolidation that's more distinct, larger, better developed veins that have a higher grade. And this is a different style of mineralization. The host for the gold is the same, but we're seeing mineralization that conceptually could be mined by either open pit or underground methods because of the grades that we're seeing. And so drilling is ongoing. We're very encouraged by the results that we're seeing. We'll be making an announcement of additional drill results in the next probably 3 or 4 weeks, and we encourage people to stay tuned and watch and see what happens. We don't have an idea what the average grade is until we complete a new resource estimate, but the individual drill results are very exciting and very encouraging.

Excellent. Thank you for elaborating on that. Your next question, a viewer is asking, "When exactly should we expect the updated mineral resource estimate?"

Well, given the drilling program is not scheduled to wind up until the end of this year, we expect to have final assays right near the end of the year, maybe not until the first part of January. And then the modeling work will commence. I know the geologists are already working on the geologic interpretations. So a new resource assessment will very likely be the second quarter of next year.

Thank you for your response. Moving on to your next question. "How much silver, if any, is within the deposit?"

Interestingly, we have very little silver at Mt Todd. On average, we see about a gram per tonne in the Batman deposit. It exists in a form that is not easily leachable or it doesn't leach quickly. We anticipate silver recoveries in the range of 30%. And in fact, the silver contribution to cash flows is so low that we don't even include it in our cash flow analysis.

Thank you for clarifying. Your next question, a viewer is asking, "Would the cutoff grade be higher in the small-scale scenario?"

Yes, absolutely. We used the 0.35 gram per tonne cutoff for the large-scale feasibility study. We're anticipating that a cutoff grade in the range of 0.45 to 0.5 grams per tonne will be used in the feasibility study for the smaller-scale project. And that, that will result in that reserve grade closer to 1 gram per tonne.

Excellent. Thank you for your answer. Your next question, a viewer is asking, "Are there any other properties in the region that you can acquire and potentially find satellite deposits?"

Well, there's regional gold producers Agnico Eagle has a project about 40 kilometers up the road from us toward Darwin that I don't believe at this stage, they're interested in selling. I think that more interesting when we talk about satellite deposits is what can be developed organically within our own land package. We have a deposit about 3.5 kilometers north of the Batman deposit that's called the Quigleys deposit that has a small resource right now. It's about 230,000 ounces and it's higher grade is deeper. We're still trying to understand exactly what we have there. But as I indicated in talking about the exploration, we've identified targets that could add another 1.8 million to 3.5 million ounces of gold, just within 5.4 kilometers in the Batman deposit along trend to the north. So satellite deposits, I think with time that there will be other deposits discovered on our exploration land package and we've already identified what we believe are highly prospective targets immediately adjacent to the Batman deposit. So I don't know that we need to go out looking to acquire anything to add that kind of potential kind of upside.

Excellent. Thank you for your insight. Your next question, "How much capital would be needed to upgrade the infrastructure on site?"

Actually, there's not a lot of capital that needs to be spent on the infrastructure that's already there. The paved road for the site will be resurfaced. The natural gas pipeline requires no additional capital expenditure. The power line doesn't require any expenditure. And in fact, we will use it for -- to supply power for the construction of the project. We envision having a third-party power producer that will generate power on site to using the natural gas pipeline. The location of that could dictate the construction of a short power line from a site just off the site or it could -- that plant could be located on site. The tailings storage facility, once it's put back into operation, we'll begin that raise -- there's 2 planned raises for the tailings storage facility. There will be a small investment in piping infrastructure and reestablishing the discharge system. And we envision adding 2 meters to the height of the dam for the freshwater storage reservoir that would give us -- allow us to have 3 full years of storage capacity. That's $4 million or $5 million to do that work. So really, there's not a lot of money that needs to be spent on the infrastructure part of developing of Mt Todd.

Thank you for shedding light on that. Moving on to your next question. "Is there confidence that all-in sustaining costs for the small-scale option will still be below industry peers?"

The all-in sustaining cost for the smaller-scale projects are going to increase over what we published for the large-scale feasibility study. And there's a couple of reasons for that. One, the large-scale feasibility study that we updated earlier this year with $960-some all-in sustaining costs over the first half of the life of the project, that contemplates an owner-operated mining fleet. It allows us to take advantage of certain economies of scale and the manpower required for the plant. As we contemplate a smaller operation, certainly, we're looking at contract mining which will reduce -- it helps us reduce the capital, but it adds to the operating cost, which ultimately drive up all-in sustaining costs. And also we lose some of the benefits of economies of scale. The reality is, is that it doesn't take a lot more people to operate a 50,000-tonne per day plant than it does a 12,000-tonne per day plant. And so we'll lose some of those efficiencies. However, all of that said, we -- our internal expectation is that we'll see an all-in sustaining cost somewhere in the range of $1,200 to $1,250 an ounce, which still provides us -- and that's U.S. dollars. And that still provides us a very healthy margin for a smaller scale operation.

Thank you for expanding on that, Fred. Your next question, a viewer is asking, "How much was Sun Valley's initial investment in Vista?"

I don't know what the actual dollar value of Sun Valley's investment is. What we report is that they own about 16.4% of our issued and outstanding shares. They've been a long-term shareholder and they have participated in financing as I believe, going back to 2010. They have been a very supportive shareholder and we have a longstanding relationship with them.

Excellent. Thank you for that response. Moving on to your next question. "Is Australia's support from mining ahead of other Tier 1 locations?"

I think that there's a handful of really truly Tier 1 mining jurisdictions. I think the U.S. and Canada and Australia are at the top of that list. Our experience in the Northern Territory of Australia certainly backs up that belief. The Northern Territory government has made changes in the last year to make the Northern Territory even more attractive as a mining investment destination. The mineral royalty has been decreased. The structures have been changed. It's become more favorable to mining companies and more attractive for investment. That's a unique step, right? I mean in this world, most jurisdictions are looking at ways that they can extract more money for mining companies in the Northern Territory, specifically as we would calculate the royalty for the Mt Todd project, our royalty obligations have been cut in half with the implementation of new legislation. So I think that's a very strong statement, a very strong demonstration of the Northern Territory's committed to a strong, viable growing mining industry.

Thank you for your comments on that. Your next question, "What was the updated date of the feasibility study?"

We're anticipating that we'll have the -- well, I guess there's 2 questions. I'm not quite sure what question they're asking. The date of the updated feasibility study for the large scale, the data is that the pricing is effective January of this year, the date of the feasibility was March. The anticipated completion of the feasibility study for this 4 million to 6 million, 150,000 to 200,000 ounce per year project is middle of next year. We're targeting having that, the new feasibility spread completed in the middle of next year.

Excellent. Thank you for that answer. We're coming up to your last 2 questions for today. Your next question, a viewer is asking, "Is there an active agreement to have a certain amount of workers coming from local native populations for when the project goes into production?"

There is not. We have a standing tradition of employing local workers. We have an existing agreement with the Jawoyn Aboriginal People through their -- the Jawoyn Association Aboriginal Corporation. There are no commitments to numbers of workers. We have a practice, whenever we hire somebody new at Mt Todd, we first go to the Jawoyn Association and post the job with them before we announce it publicly. We've had -- recently had a couple of aboriginal employees retire, employees who have been with us almost 18 years. And so today, we're -- today, we used to be able to say that over half of our employees were aboriginal. That's not quite the case today. But we seek to employ and train aboriginal people at every instance. Aspirationally, we would like to think that at some point in the life of the project, that 25% of our employees will be aboriginal. Given the fact that there's not a strong mining culture in the Katherine area and those skill sets don't exist today, I think that at the start of the operation, we'll probably be lucky if we're looking at 5% or 6%. But we think that, that will grow. And so we have long -- for a long time, we've promoted a residential community or project or a community-based project as opposed to fly in, fly out, which is more traditional in remote areas of Western Australia. We happen to be favored to have a project that's 30 minutes from a town of 14,000 people. And we think that a large number of our employees will either live in Katherine or choose to live in the region. And so we're committed to developing that kind of a project and have been working with the NT government in planning for that type of a project for more than a decade.

Excellent. Thank you for elaborating on that. And your last question for today, a viewer commented, "Great to see the stock double in the past year and hitting all-time highs. Have you seen increased institutional support?"

It's very hard for us on the U.S. side of the border to determine who's doing the buying. I know that on the TSX, we can all go in and look and see who's buying and what the sources of the cash inflow to the stock are. On the U.S. side, that's a little more difficult. We're relying on filings that happen 45 days after the end of the quarter to see what changes in people's holdings are. And so sometime about the middle of November, we'll be in a position to say what happened with regards to respective changes. Occasionally, we hear word from a specific fund or an institution that they're increasing their holding. Most institutions, unfortunately, with regards to this answer, are quite closemouthed about what their trading activities are, and we find out through their public filings. So I'm sorry that I'm not able to provide more color, more to this answer. But the truth of the matter is that at this stage, we're uncertain and we don't know what the source of the volume, although I have suspicions that part of it has been retail. I believe that there's been an important part of the buying in the last 3 weeks that's come from the retail sector.

Excellent. Thank you, Fred, for all your answers today, and thank you to our viewers who submitted questions. If you did not get a chance to submit your questions, feel free to reach out to your account manager here at Renmark. This concludes our presentation for today. But before we go, I will turn it back over to you, Fred, for final remarks.

Thank you, Julia, and thanks to each of you for taking time to join us on the call today. Again, I apologize for the late start to the presentation and due to the technical difficulties that we were experiencing. I hope that your takeaway from our chance to talk today is that you recognize that the Mt Todd project is a very large, high-quality gold project that it's shove-ready, that we have all of the major permits for the development of the project, that we have support of the local community and indigenous peoples and very supportive government. I hope that you recognize, as demonstrated by what's happened in the last maybe 3 or 4 weeks, that there's a tremendous opportunity for value creation. If you believe, as we do, that the gold price is going to remain strong and in fact, increase, I think that there is a compelling argument to be made that both in the near term and in the midterm, that there are drivers that will help increase the value of Vista Gold, and it will end up being a profitable investment for you. We're very excited about the market that we find ourselves in. We're excited about the stage that the Mt Todd project is in. We're working to position Mt Todd as a leading development opportunity. And we think that with time that there will be a shift in the market activity that we all see and that we all watch and that there will be a focus on early -- or advanced stage, shovel-ready projects like Mt Todd. And our aim is to position Mt Todd to be one of those leading projects given its size, its geographic location, the fact that it's fully permitted. And at the same time, we are exercising the discipline to be able to recognize the best value at the right time. And I hope that those are the takeaways. We're in an environment where there aren't a lot of major deposit discoveries. And at some point, producers have got to look at projects like Mt Todd. The gold price will help increase the value. These, I think, are well-established facts that will help drive a higher valuation for Vista shareholders. And I believe that you'll be rewarded for an investment in Vista Gold. So we invite you to look at this seriously. And if this is the right time, I mean we've come off a little bit from our high a week ago. We're down about 10% or 12%. This might be the time to get back in if you think the price of gold is going to continue its upward climb. So with that, I thank you for your time. And certainly, if you have any questions about the company or the project, reach out to your Renmark advisor or feel free to contact us here at Vista Gold, Pamela Solly, our Vice President of Investor Relations. We'll be happy to take your call. And if she can't answer your questions, she'll get somebody on the phone who can. So with that, thank you very much, and have a wonderful afternoon.

Thank you again, Fred, for the presentation. Once again, this was Vista Gold Corp., trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol VGZ and on the NYSE American under the ticker symbol VGZ. Thank you again to everyone in Chicago and surrounding areas for joining us today. The playback for the virtual non-deal roadshow will be available on our website 24 to 48 hours after the presentation under the VNDR Library tab. Stay tuned for other presentations in your area. Thank you, and see you next time.