Vista Gold Corp. ($VGZ)

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Vista Gold's First Quarter 2026 Financial Results and Corporate Update Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. Today is Friday, May 1, 2026. It is now my pleasure to introduce Pamela Solly, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Jenny, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining the Vista Gold Corp. First Quarter 2026 Financial Results and Corporate Update Conference Call. I'm Pamela Solly, Vice President of Investor Relations. Also on the call today is Fred Earnest, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Doug Tobler, Chief Financial Officer. On April 30, 2026, Vista reported its results for the quarter ended March 31, 2026, and for additional details, our full financial statements and MD&A are included in our Form 10-Q available for review at sec.gov or sedar.ca. Copies of the news release and quarterly report on Form 10-Q are also available on our website at www.vistagold.com. During the course of this call and the question-and-answer session, we will be making forward-looking statements. These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results, performance or achievements of Vista to be materially different from results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. Please refer to our most recently filed Form 10-K for details of results -- I'm sorry, risks and other important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in our forward-looking statements and the cautionary note regarding estimates of mineral resources and mineral reserves. I will now turn the call over to Fred Earnest.

Thank you, Pam. And thank you, everyone, for joining us on the call today. We will begin with an overview of our first quarter achievements and then discuss our outlook for the remainder of the year. During the first quarter, we completed a public offering for aggregate gross proceeds of $44.85 million and net proceeds of $42 million. We also made significant progress toward achieving our 2026 objectives. Our priorities for 2026 include all activities leading to permit modification approvals to align the existing permits with the 2025 feasibility study designs, completing predevelopment optimizations to provide key inputs for detailed engineering and design expanding corporate capability by building an Australian-based team to lead project development and advancing project execution planning. I will discuss these topics in greater detail later in the call, but I will now turn the time over to Doug Tobler, our CFO, for a review of our financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2020.

Thanks, Fred. And for those of you on the call, thanks for joining us this morning. My comments will provide a recap of our financial position and results of operation as presented in our first quarter 2026 Form 10-Q. All the amounts that I discuss today will be in U.S. dollars. I'm pleased to report that we ended the first quarter with a strong balance sheet. We had cash on hand of $52.7 million compared to a cash balance of $13.6 million at year-end 2025. This increase reflects the proceeds of the public offering that closed on March 9, and offset by spending during the first quarter. As Fred mentioned about the offering, it included issuance of 17.94 million common shares for gross proceeds of $44.85 million. And after the deduction of transaction expenses, the net proceeds were $42 million. We were very pleased to receive such strong support from this financing, and this funding provides us with the ability to move forward immediately with key programs and add the appropriate resources to our organization to support the beginning of detailed engineering. It's important to note that we also continue to have a clean balance sheet with no debt at March 31, 2026. Turning to our results of operations for the quarter. We reported a net loss of $3.1 million for the 3 months ended March 31, 2026. Which compares to a net loss of $2.7 million for the 3 months ended March 31, 2025. Mt Todd project related recurring costs increased by about $100,000 due to addition of project management team members and higher power costs due to water management pumping requirements. These were offset partially by lower project program costs in 2026 compared to the prior year, which included work on the 2025 feasibility study. Corporate expenses accounted for the balance of the increase in the net loss on a quarter-over-quarter basis. These expenses increased about $300,000, which resulted from additional legal, consulting and board costs associated with ongoing advancement of Mt. Todd. Now just as a general comment about our results of operation, we're pleased to report that our overall financial results are tracking in line with our expectations. The results that we're achieving are being completed efficiently and support our target of commencing detailed engineering and design in 2027. Thank you. That concludes my remarks. I'll turn the call back to Fred.

Thank you, Doug. The strength of our balance sheet resulting from the successful financing that Doug has just described is fundamental to our success going forward. We now have the financial resources to successfully complete the tasks of obtaining final project authorizations, building a project development team and undertaking the work to accelerate and optimize the start of detailed engineering and design. I'll begin with an update of our permitting activities. In January, we appointed Dr. Francis Karachi as our approvals manager based in Darwin. His primary responsibility is overseeing the permit modification and approval processes. The work that Francis is managing includes the conversion of existing approvals to be in compliance with legislative changes in the Northern Territory, these approvals are under review by the agency at this time and approval is expected early in Q3. The application of an additional authorization under the Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority Act to complement the 2 authorizations that the company already holds. This work, including engagement with the aboriginal custodians, is in progress with authorization expected later this year. The next involves ecological field investigations and the preparation of the application to request a renewed authorization under the Common Wealth Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. We expect to file the application early in the fourth quarter with the Department of Climate Change Energy, the environment and water. Our modification of the EIS through the Northern Territory EPA referral process is the next activity. We are preparing the referral documentation and expect to file once we have clarity on the new Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority authorization. We are also working on a water treatment and discharge license, known as the waste discharge license to allow us to treat the water accumulated in the Batman fit and discharges as we have in the past. This application has been submitted and approval is expected in the coming months. And finally, an amendment of our environmental mining license previously known as the mining management plan to align this authorization with the plans for the project as described in the 2025 feasibility study. We expect the approval process to run concurrently with the EPA referral process. As you will note, there is a lot of activity in this area. Some authorizations are expected in the very near future, others later this year or early next year with the final or last authorization, under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act expected sometime in the middle or latter part of 2027. As each of these permits has previously been approved for a larger scale project, we are confident that approvals will be granted, and we are working to manage the approvals process to achieve final results in the most expedient manner possible. Now switching over to technical studies. We are advancing predevelopment optimizations in line with the recommendations presented in the 2025 Mt. Todd feasibility study and are evaluating certain preliminary engineering activities that would transition to front-end engineering design and allow us to accelerate and optimize detailed engineering. We have also commenced project execution planning. Specifically, metallurgical testing is underway at ALS Amtech in Perth, Australia. The core for this testing was recovered from holes drilled for the express purpose of this program. The objectives of the program are to optimize the grind size and gold recoveries and provide data for the sizing and selection of key equipment components in the process plant. A geotechnical review has commenced with drilling and geotechnical mapping in progress in the Batman pit to assess the opportunity to steepen the West pit wall. The outcomes of this work will be used to update our mine plans with the potential to reduce the amount of waste mined and/or convert additional mineral resources to mineral reserves. Completing this work along with the permit modifications are important prerequisites to initiating detailed engineering design, which we expect to begin in 2027. The decision to commence detailed engineering and design is expected to mark the start of design, construction, and commissioning, culminating in first gold production. Now let me talk about what we're doing to build a project development team in Australia. Since the beginning of the year, we have established a greater corporate presence in Australia. To date, we have hired 4 senior project management team members based in Perth and an approvals manager based in Darwin. We have expanded our executive capacity in the areas of projects, technical services, external relations and social performance, legal and administration and finance. Recruiting is ongoing for an Australian-based Managing Director who will be responsible for the overall delivery of the Mt. Todd project. Later this year, we plan to begin building the broader project development team. Now switching over to safety and other social matters. During the quarter, we maintained our strong safety environmental performance. I note that the recently concluded wet season in the Northern Territory was the most severe wet season in 20 years with approximately 50% more rainfall at site than we would normally expect. Some of you may have seen or read reports of widespread flooding in the Northern Territory and Western Australia. Despite these challenging conditions, our site personnel delivered exceptional performance, effectively implemented our water management activities in accordance with our protocols and maintained operational control throughout these events. Their diligence and commitment ensured that our activities were conducted both safely and effectively. I'm pleased to report that aside from an abnormally high accumulation of water in the ponds on site, we experienced only minor damage to roads on site and no other losses. Looking ahead, we believe the key to unlocking the value of Mt Todd is found in the work we are doing to secure the final authorizations and establish the basis for an efficient start to detail engineering design. With this in mind, Mt Todd holds tremendous intrinsic value and represents an exceptional investment opportunity at conservative long-term gold prices. With an all-in sustaining cost of approximately $1,500 per ounce and a very conservative gold price of $3,300 per ounce, the Mt. Todd gold project will generate USD 300 million of free cash flow annually. At the same gold price, the feasibility study, net asset value per share is $14.89, nearly 7x our current share price. Today, with much higher gold prices and growing investor interest, Mt Todd is positioned as one of the most attractive development stage projects in the gold sector. Its strong project economics, favorable jurisdiction, permitting status and existing infrastructure, make it well suited for near-term development. We are confident that this is the right market in which to advance Mt Todd. In conclusion, Vista is committed to seeing the Mt Todd project developed in compliance with the highest mining and ESG standards and is diligently working toward this goal. For more information about Vista Gold and the Mt Todd project, I refer you to our corporate presentation, which can be found on our website at www.vistagold.com. We believe that Vista Gold represents an exceptional investment opportunity and that current prices represent a tremendous opportunity to establish a position or increase one's holdings in Vista Gold. This concludes our formal remarks, and we will now respond to any questions from participants on this call.

[Operator Instructions] We have no questions. I will now hand the call back to Fred Earnest for the closing remarks.

Thank you, Jenny, and thank you to all of you who have taking the time this morning, at the start of your day to listen to our first quarter results and corporate update conference call. As I noted, with the completion of the financing in the first quarter, we now have the strength of balance sheet that will allow us to be able to move forward with all of the activities to advance Mt Todd. We have the resources to be able to obtain the final project authorizations. We're building a project development team and very happy with the people that have already joined our team in Australia, and we look forward to the addition of others as the year progresses. I'm very pleased with the work that's being undertaken to advance the engineering studies. And we look forward to being able to announce the results of those studies as they -- as things progress. We've seen a lot of volatility in the gold price since the first of the year. We believe long term that the gold price will continue to rise. We're not surprised by the volatility and the conditions that we see throughout the world. And with the financing completed, we're now in a position to establish a strong basis and continue to grow the value of the company for our shareholders. We're excited for those of you who have already joined us in this journey and we invite others to come along as we seek to create greater value for all shareholders. As always, if there are others who have additional questions, we invite you to reach out to the company. We'll be happy to spend the time and discuss the questions that you have. And until then, we wish all of you a very pleasant day, and thank you for joining us this morning.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, the conference has now ended. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.