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Vista Gold Corp. (VGZ)

Q2 2013 Earnings Call· Tue, Aug 6, 2013

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Vista Gold 2013 Second Quarter Financial Results and Third Quarter Project Update Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. Today is Tuesday, August 6, 2013. It is now my pleasure to introduce Vista’s President and CEO and your host, Mr. Fred Earnest. Please go ahead, Mr. Earnest.

Frederick H. Earnest

Management

Thank you. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining Vista Gold Corp.’s 2013 second quarter financial results and third quarter project update conference call. I am pleased to be joined on this call by Jack Engele, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Also here with us in Denver is Connie Martinez, our Director of Investor Relations. During the first half of the year, we have achieved important milestones by completing three significant activities at Mt. Todd, namely water treatment in the Batman pit, the submission of our environmental permit application and the preliminary feasibility study, all of which I will expand on later in the call. Despite these continued value adding activities, we have been challenged by our share price and the gold price. In response to current market conditions, we have implemented meaningful cost cutting measures, both corporately and at Mt. Todd, aimed at preserving corporate liquidity, while positioning the Mt. Todd project to move forward in a timely and cost effective manner once the markets turn. Jack Engele will expand upon those cost reduction efforts during his review of the financial results. In the course of this call, we will be making forward-looking statements. These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of Vista to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. Please refer to our Form 10-K for a detailed discussion of risks and other important factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those in our forward-looking statements. I’ll now turn the time over to Jack Engele. Following his discussion of the financial results, I will provide an update on the status of our core projects.

John F. Engele

Management

Thank you, Fred. Good afternoon, everyone. I’ll start with our statement of income and loss for June 30, 2013. We reported a net loss of $21 million or $0.26 per share for the three months ended June 30, 2013. The largest component of this loss was a $14.1 million mark-to-market non-cash loss net of deferred tax on our Midas shares. During the quarter, we expensed a total of $5.9 million, mainly at Mt. Todd, where the major cost drivers included completion of the preliminary feasibility study, which we announced in May, and preparation of an Environmental Impact Statement, which we filed in June. During the quarter, we also incurred corporate, general and administrative expenses of $1.2 million. Activity at Guadalupe de los Reyes was minimal during the quarter as our principal focus continues to be Mt. Todd. Turning to our balance sheet, our cash and cash equivalents as of June 30, totaled $9.3 million. During the quarter, we used $7 million in operations. Over one-third of that amount was used for completing the preliminary feasibility study and preparing the Environmental Impact Statement. These large programs are now complete and we expect the burn rate of Mt. Todd to be reduced significantly during the second half of the year. The June 30, 2013, fair value of our position in Midas Gold was $22.2 million. This is a reduction of $18.5 million during the quarter. This reduction in value is consistent with the steady decline that we have seen in equity values in the junior gold sector. The number of Midas shares that we hold remains unchanged at about 31.8 million. Our working capital as at June 30, totaled $12.9 million. This is a decrease of $18.8 million from last quarter. The largest components of this decrease are the change in fair…

Frederick H. Earnest

Management

Thank you, Jack. For discussing Vista’s financial results for the second quarter of 2013, I’ll be providing an overview of our projects starting with our non-core projects and concluding with the Mt. Todd gold project. but first, I want to address one market related topic. Since our last quarterly update, we’ve been advised that two analysts, Jeff Wright formerly with Hunter Securities, notified as the Global Hunter Securities had made the decision to exit the precious metal space to focus on capital fund raising activities in other sectors. We’re also notified by ROTH Capital Partners that Brian Post was leaving ROTH Capital to pursue other professional opportunities. We continued to enjoy analyst coverage from Adam Graf with Cowen Securities, formerly Dahlman Rose in New York City and Paolo Lostritto at National Bank Financial in Toronto and are always working with other brokerage firms to attract additional coverage. I will start to review the project reviews with the Awak Mas gold project in Indonesia. Our partners, One Asia Resources Ltd. continued to make progress with the feasibility, evaluation, and permitting of the project. We expect that One Asia will be in a position to complete all of their obligations under the JV agreement later this year. As a reminder, perfection of the earning under the JV agreement entitles One Asia to an 80% project interest. At the Los Cardones gold project in Baja California Sur, Mexico, the investor group is making good process. Ongoing discussions with the Mexican government resulted in certain project design changes, which are currently in project and that are anticipated to facilitate the permit approval process. These design changes are to be incorporated into permit applications later this month and additionally, are to be incorporated into an updated feasibility study expected to be completed later this month.…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) And our first question comes in from Adrian Day from Adrian Day Asset Management. Please go ahead. Adrian Day – Adrian Day Asset Management: Yeah, good afternoon. I had a couple of questions, if I may, on Guadalupe; one is how much have you been spending on the project. I know you’re cutting back now, but how much have you been spending over the last year or so? And the second question, I guess, are you able to give us a kind of range of what you might expect for the sale of the mill equipment, just a range?

Frederick H. Earnest

Management

Adrian, good afternoon. Thanks for the questions. First of all, with respect to the Guadalupe de los Reyes project, our cash burn at Guadalupe has been reduced to…

John F. Engele

Management

About $0.5 million on the year.

Frederick H. Earnest

Management

About $0.5 million on the year, and during the first quarter of the year, we were completing the preliminary economic assessment and the new resource assessment. Since the announcement of that result, our expenditure level has been cut drastically. We have nobody on site. I think another cost related to that project that’s been reduced is that our General Manager, Vice President of Mexico has retired and we have not replaced Hector, and we’ve cut back the time that our geologic consultant was working to only that the amount of work that’s required to maintain community relations. So there has been, I think, you see that there has been a very significant reduction in the cost. And going forward, we’re projecting that our annual holding cost will be about $0.5 million a year. With respect to the mill equipment, when we listed the equipment last November, the mill equipment had an asking price of $15.5 million. We’ve had the expressions of interest. The interest has been, one particular offer was entirely in shares in a company that was not very liquid. We rejected that offer. We have written down the value of the mill and we’ve also adjusted the asking price. Presently, the asking price is $10.95 million. What would be the expected realization on actual sale price, Adrian, I am hopeful that we can be very close to that number, but I think it’s important to say that we will not walk away from a credible offer if it’s less than that. Adrian Day – Adrian Day Asset Management: Right. Okay, good, thank you.

Operator

Operator

And there are no more questions at this time, please continue.

Frederick H. Earnest

Management

We have no other questions, perhaps it would be – I could just – I’ll just delay a minute here in case someone else has another question. I alluded to the fact that our Vice President, General Manager, Mexico retired. We have also eliminated the position of Vice President of Project Development within the corporate organization. These are two reductions in staff that we’ve made at the executive level of the organization. Jack alluded to the fact that the management team at Mt. Todd and the executive team here in Denver have voluntarily accepted reductions in cash compensation. I would just speak to that to underline that I think that this is a reflection of the commitment that the management team has to the development of these projects and the recognition that markets are very difficult right now.

Operator

Operator

And there don’t seem to be anymore questions coming in. (Operator Instructions)

Frederick H. Earnest

Management

Let me just expand for a moment more on the environmental permitting process in the Northern Territory. As indicated, the environmental impact study was submitted to the Northern Territory EPA for a review on public consultation. The public consultation process will end on August 12, and thereafter, we will receive agency and public comments. The company must then respond to all comments and submit a final EIS, which incorporates our responses to the public and agency comment, the NT EPA will the review the responses and as contained in the final EIS, and if appropriate both in substances and detail recommend approval of the EIS to the administer for the Department of Mines and Energy, who has the responsibility for approval of the EIS. We expect that the time that we’ll be required to respond to comments will be something on the order of 8 to 10 weeks. We anticipate that near the end of October, we’ll be able to lodge the final EIS and that going forward as indicated; we will see approval of the EIS near the end of the year. If there are no further questions, we would like to thank everyone for their interest, their participation and we’ll bring this conference call to a conclusion. Thank you everyone.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude your conference call for today. We thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines and have a great day.