Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Vista Gold’s 2017 Financial Results and 2018 Corporate Update Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. Today is Friday, March 9, 2017. It is now my pleasure to introduce Vista’s President and CEO and your host, Mr. Fred Earnest. Please go ahead, Mr. Earnest.

Thank you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining Vista Gold Corp.’s 2017 annual financial results and 2018 corporate update conference call. I am pleased to be joined on this call by Jack Engele, our Senior Vice President and CFO and Connie Martinez, our Director of Investor Relations, both here with me in our corporate office in Denver. In 2017, we laid the groundwork for some very significant advancement in our Mt. Todd gold project. Technical work and extensive process area testing paved the way for the improvements in the economics of the project that were announced on January 24 with the announcement of our updated preliminary feasibility study results. Two days prior to that, we announced the approval of our final major environmental permit. We are understandably very pleased with the work that has been completed and the results that we have announced. 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 actual results to differ materially from those in our forward-looking statements. I will now turn the time over to Jack Engel.

Thank you, Fred. Good afternoon, everyone or excuse me, good morning everyone. I will start with our statement of income and loss for the year ended December 31, 2017. We reported a net loss of $12 million or $0.12 a share for the year ended December 31, 2017. This includes $10.8 million of operating expenses and $1.2 million mark-to-market loss on our investment in Midas Gold Corp. The main components of the $10.8 million of operating expenses include $2.4 million of fixed site management cost at Mt. Todd, about $3 million of fixed corporate G&A costs, about $1.5 million of non-cash stock-based compensation and depreciation and about $3.8 million in discretionary programs. The biggest of which was work permitting, ore sorting and met testing programs and the substantial completion of our Mt. Todd PFS update. 2017 fixed cost at Mt. Todd in Australian dollar terms were substantially unchanged from 2016. Similarly, corporate G&A fixed costs are consistent with our 2016 costs. Turning to our balance sheet for 2017, our working capital totaled approximately $19 million on December 31, 2017, which included cash and treasury bills of about $16.6 million. This is down about $7.3 million from our year end 2016 treasury balance.. The cash consumed in operations was as already discussed and this is net of about $1.8 million net proceeds received from the Guadalupe de los Reyes as option payment in October and about $350,000 of net proceeds received from the sale of our Long Valley claims in California. The mark-to-market value of our remaining 7.8 million shares of Midas Gold Corp at December 31, ‘17 was about $3.7 million. Although we note that we have about a 50% increase of net value since the end of year. The company continues to be debt free. Looking ahead through 2018,…

Thank you, Jack. I will first address the environmental authorization that we received and then discuss the updated PFS results in greater detail. First, in 2014, we received the approval of the environmental impact statement for the Mt. Todd gold project. The EIS was reviewed and approved by the Northern Territory Environmental Protection Agency. This approval represented the achievement of a very important milestone in the development of the project. Soon after receiving this approval, the Commonwealth Department of Environment and Energy advised our Australian subsidiary that upon reviewing the approved EIS that concluded that the Mt. Todd project would be required to seek an additional approval under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act of 1999. The company prepared and presented a comprehensive package requesting authorization of the activities related to the Mt. Todd project in December of 2015. Following review by the agency, Vista spent much of the succeeding 18 months responding to request for additional information. We have worked with local stakeholders, NT agency officials and academic experts and are pleased to be partnered with experts and institutions that demonstrate commitment and innovation in helping us to achieve our common goals. The formal notification of the approval of our request for authorization of a controlled activity was received on Monday, January 22 by our Australian subsidiary and publicly announced to the North American markets that same day. The EPBC authorization requires that we next submit detailed monitoring and mitigation plans based on the conditions of the approval. I am pleased to report that this work has already commenced. Combined, the EIS and EPBC authorization constitute the two major environmental permits required for the development of the Mt. Todd gold project. We are pleased that we have reached the second and very important environmental milestone. I will now…

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Heiko Ihle with HCW Wainwright.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question.

Good morning, Heiko.

Congratulations on a good 2017. There is a lot of progress here in moving Mt. Todd forward, so well done. You recently filed an improved NI 43-101 for the site, congratulations on that as well. This might be a little more philosophic, but two things on that. Does this increase the interest from outside party? I mean, I’d assume it did given the improved economics of the site.

Well, certainly, as you are aware and others on the call maybe aware earlier this week, the Producers and Developers Association of Canada held their annual conference in Toronto. That was a very successful conference for us. We had a lot of traffic past the booth. And I think part of that was generated by the announcement of results in January, part of it was generated by the fact that the report is now available and people can get their hands on it, review it. So, I think those combined factors have certainly increased the awareness of Vista Gold and the value of the Mt. Todd project.

Fair. Have you done a lot of metallurgy and grinding size work there for the automated sorting, has this made lately any impact on your preference for the 33,000 versus 50,000 ton per day scenario that you have discussed in the past?

No, the same technology is applied to both of these cases. Obviously, as we as we did in the previous preliminary feasibility study, we have reported results of the base case as the 50,000 ton per day case. It has the better economics. The 33,000 ton per day case has been designed as previously to be expandable. It benefits from lower capital costs and slightly lower project economic returns, the lower CapEx is not proportional to the decrease in size that’s just not the way it works, but the technology has not steered us towards one or the other at this point in time.

Got it, okay. And then just finally you own a bunch of shares at Midas, almost 8 million shares, you made no sales in 2017. At what point in time should we expect you guys to monetize that stock? I mean, Midas has done extremely well in January of this year and you are sitting on a huge paper profit for the year on that thing?

That’s a very interesting question. You are asking us to telegraph a corporate decision that’s not been made. We continue to be very supportive shareholders of Midas Gold and the management team there you’ll recall that that Midas has traded at substantially higher valuations in the past. Our investment was originally priced at something closer to $3.25 and while that the significant improvement that Jack referenced is a very noticeable improvement and we are very delighted in what that’s done to the value of our investment. It still represents a significant discount to the original value that we put into Midas Gold. And we look at this on a regular basis and we will take decisions going forward as appropriate, Heiko. We are not in a position at this point in time to say that we are actively evaluating a sale of those shares at this point in time.

Very good. Thanks, guys.

[Operator Instructions] And we have no further questions at this time. I will turn the call back over to the presenters.

Very well. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who have joined the call this morning. As I indicated at the start of the call, 2017 was a very significant year for us in laying the groundwork for what we were able to announce in January. The results of the testing have been very significant. To dispel any potential misconceptions, the results that we announced in January were not the result of any economic engineering, but rather they are entirely based upon the results of the improvements resulting from the automated sorting and the associated reductions in our operating costs, followed by the benefit that comes from the redesign of the grinding circuit and the improvements in lower power consumption and most notably the improved gold recovery and the associated increase in projected gold production. We are very excited about this. We now, without permits in hand, feel that Mt. Todd is a project that stands apart in a sea of development projects as being a very large project, technically advanced, environmentally permitted and we are now working to achieve a revaluation of the project and Vista Gold Corp. We invite those who maybe interested in learning more to visit our website or reach out to company personnel directly, where we will be happy to spend time with you and help you understand the significant changes and the reason why we are so very optimistic about the Mt. Todd project in the future of Vista Gold. Thank you for joining us and have a very pleasant day.

This concludes today’s conference call. You may now disconnect.