Good afternoon. My name is Brandy and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Vista Gold Second Quarter 2019 Financial Results Conference call. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. Ms. Pamela Solly, you may begin your conference.

Thank you, Brandy. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen and thank you for joining the Vista Gold Corp.’s second quarter 2019 financial results and corporate update conference call. I am Pamela Solly, Vice President of Investor Relations. On the call today is Fred Ernest, President and CEO and Doug Tobler, Chief Financial Officer. During the course of this call, 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-Q for more information about 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 call over to Fred Earnest.

Thank you, Pam. I would like to begin by acknowledging the contributions of Jack Engele during his tenure as Vista’s CFO and welcome Doug Tobler as Vista’s new CFO. Doug joined the company on July 1 following Jack Engele’s retirement as Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Jack was a key member of our senior executive team for more than 6 years, providing us with exceptional financial leadership on many initiatives. On behalf of the Board of Directors and management, I would like to thank Jack for his many valuable contributions and wish him well in his retirement. For the information of those on the call, Doug brings with him more than 35 years of corporate financial management experience gained as a chief financial officer, CPA and corporate adviser. He has extensive experience with growth-stage resource companies, including most recently as CFO of Lydian International. Prior to that, Doug was CFO of Alacer Gold Corp. through its period of late-stage exploration mine development and early stage – and rather early years of operations of the Çöpler Gold Mine in Turkey. While a CPA and adviser, Doug assisted numerous mining clients with strategic, financial and corporate accounting objectives. At this time, I would like to discuss briefly a few of our highlights from the second quarter. We’re extremely pleased with the progress and results of our ongoing metallurgical optimization program. Since our last call in May, our primary focus has been on completing this test work and compiling the results. We also commenced work to update the 2018 preliminary feasibility study for our Mt. Todd gold project. Some of the metallurgical testing program data has been coming in slower than we had hoped, but we like what we see today. Once fully received, we will incorporate the comprehensive results, along with the current economic parameters, into an updated PFS anticipated for completion later this quarter. As part of our technical program, we retained independent consultants to review the fine grinding circuit and performed an independent benchmarking study for our own internal use, which we expect will complement the upcoming PFS. We continue to work closely with the Northern Territory’s Department of Mines during its review of our Mine Management Plan. I will discuss these topics in greater detail later in the call, but I will now turn the time over to Doug Tobler for a review of our financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2019.

Thanks, Fred. It’s good to be here and it’s also good to be part of the Vista organization. And for those on the call, thank you for joining. We appreciate your time today. As with the technical programs, we had a good financial quarter and first half of 2019. Vista continues to maintain a solid working capital position and utilizes our non-dilutive sources of funding to advance Mt. Todd. If you will turn to the balance sheet, I will explain this in more detail. Working capital reflects the difference between our current assets and our current liabilities. At June 30, our working capital was $9.6 million. Importantly, this included highly liquid cash and U.S. treasury securities of $6.3 million. We held $8 million of these same assets at year-end. So, our year-to-date net expenditures through June 30, was $1.7 million. During this period, we benefited from lower spending during the first half of the year and that was mostly related to Mt. Todd holding cost. We saw an inflow of $1.7 million from the Guadalupe de los Reyes as option holder. And of course, there was a stronger U.S. dollar during that period compared to last year. We did see an impact on our working capital as our holdings in Midas Gold were mark to market. This was accentuated just prior to the end of the second quarter, because Midas took the opportunity to strengthen its own balance sheet by completing an equity offering. This commonly results in a temporary decrease in share price. Unfortunately, Midas’ share price since June 30 rebounded by 12.5% in the month of July. As a closing note on the balance sheet, Vista remains debt free at June 30. The two non-current liabilities shown on our balance sheet reflect U.S. GAAP accounting [indiscernible] this quarter…

Thank you, Doug. Let me first begin by providing an update on the metallurgical testing program. Metallurgical test work at Vista’s Mt. Todd gold project continued throughout the second quarter. In May of this year, we announced the initial results from metallurgical test being conducted on material from the Batman deposit. Leach tests on material with an 80% passing grind size of approximately 50 microns achieved average gold recoveries of 92.7%, a 6 percentage point improvement from the average gold recoveries reported in our January 2018 preliminary feasibility study. Gold recoveries at coarser grind sizes were consistent with previous test results on similarly sized material. Additional leach test work is nearing completion, and final results are expected in the coming weeks. We anticipate the final results of our fine grinding and leach tests – leaching tests will achieve average gold recoveries in the low 90% range, reflecting a significant improvement compared to the results reported in the January 2018 PFS. Analysis indicates that each 1% improvement in gold recoveries could add approximately 0.5% to Mt. Todd’s after-tax IRR and approximately $25 million to the after-tax NPV. Upon conclusion of the metallurgical optimization program, comprehensive results will be incorporated into an updated Mt. Todd PFS, anticipated for completion later this quarter. In addition to the improvements in gold recovery resulting from a finer grind size, the U.S. dollar/Australian dollar foreign exchange rate has changed favorable to the project since January 2018. As approximately 65% of the capital and operating costs will be denominated in Australian dollars, this is expected to have a significant positive impact on project economics and will be included in the updated project economics. Let me talk about the benchmarking study and the review of the fine grinding circuit next. As we come to the conclusion of the…

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Heiko Ihle with H.C. Wainwright.

Hey guys. Thanks for taking my questions.

Heiko, how are you?

Good, good. I just want to congratulate Doug on his appointment. And Jack, thank you for all your hard work with the company over the years. It’s been quite a pleasure working with you, and you’ll be missed. I was going through the 10-Q earlier today. And Doug sort of talked about this in the intro for this call, but on the balance sheet. And the one thing that was sort of mentally missing for me in the prepared remarks, and I’m just really thinking out loud here, if you take out Midas, your "cash and short-term investments" went from $8.1 million on 12/31 to $6.324 million today. Now that’s essentially a burn of $1.74 million for 6 months, annualized at $3.5 million. Given that you’re, and these are your words, nearing completion of leach test work, how should we be looking into this burn rate for the rest of the year and, if possible, maybe even by quarter?

Sure. So as I mentioned on the call previously, our fixed costs, which would be our corporate costs and our holding costs for Mt. Todd these costs will trend consistently with what you’ve seen in the previous quarters. What we would expect would be a slight balloon during the third quarter, and that would be in the neighborhood of $0.5 million to maybe $1 million as we wrap up the studies. And then you’ll see some of those costs continue to lag in – during the early half of the fourth quarter.

Okay. So call it 60-40, Q3 and Q4?

Around probably 70-30.

70-30. Okay, very helpful. Thank you. And then this question is quite a bit more philosophical. I mean I did some preliminary modeling on the higher recoveries based on all the work that you guys have done and just doing like mental exercises. And frankly, the effects on our internal model from the changes are quite staggering, and that probably goes in line with the share price increasing substantially more than the GDXJ that you were discussing earlier. I mean the mine looks to be quite profitable, and that’s using a much lower spot price because that’s just what we use in our price deck. And again, it’s probably more philosophical, but over the next 5 to 10 years, what kind of technology or other improvements do you or your consultants see that may actually improve mining methods at Mt. Todd even more, if any? And if so, like can you just maybe provide a little bit of color of once the leach testing is completed, what the next focus is going to be, if anything?

That’s a great question, Heiko. Your observations are very astute. As we announced the results of the PFS, we will, like you in your model, be using a gold price that’s conservative to what the gold price is today. And we, like you, have seen some very, to use your word, staggering results as we look at the results and the impact that the testing programs have had as well as the changes in foreign exchange rates. And that leads us to be very, very optimistic, and we’re very satisfied with the results of these programs. You asked what could possibly change technologically as we look forward to the next 5, 10 years with regards to the mining. And I’m going to add to that the processing. You’re well aware that – of our endeavors on the processing side to incorporate technological advances that are widely accepted and well proven in the industry. Specifically, we’ve adopted the use of high-pressure grinding roll crushers. We have – we’ve implemented ore sorting, which 10 years, 15 years ago, these were things that were just starting to be tried and implemented on a larger scale in the industry. Today, they’re being implemented and used on a more wide basis. We’ve adopted fine grinding technology that others have been using for the last 10 years as well. These have resulted in the improvements in the grinding circuit. On the mining side, one of the things that we’re seeing more – being used more and more widely in Australia specifically is the use of autonomous mining fleets, specifically call trucks without operators in them. The pit at Mt. Todd has been designed in a way that the ramps will be long term on the east side of the pit. They’ll not be moving the waste…

I got to tell you. This was a much, much, much more comprehensive answer than I thought I was going to get on this call, and I think me and everybody else on this phone call appreciates the color. And it shows that there is a longer-term game plan going on as well, so thank you for that. And I will get back in queue.

Okay, pretty good. Thanks, Heiko.

I would now like to turn the call back over to Mr. Fred Earnest for closing remarks. Sir, please go ahead.

Thank you, Brandy. Again, we would like to thank everyone who’s taken time to be on the call with us today. We are very excited about what’s happening, the results that we’ve seen thus far. We are looking forward to the coming weeks and months as we wrap up the testing program and complete the final work on the update of the preliminary feasibility study. I would invite all who are on the call and who subsequently listened to this call to keep an eye on the news flow and to be attentive to the announcements that will come. We look forward to being able to report results that are substantiated by a significant amount of test work and engineering. I think that everyone will be very pleasantly surprised by the change in the results as a result of the improved recovery and the changes in foreign exchange rates. As I stated previously, we will be using a slightly conservative gold price, but we will be providing sensitivity analysis that will help you understand the value of the project at today’s current gold price, which we think is very exciting. With that, I will simply close the call and thank all of you for your participation and for your interest and wish you all a very pleasant day.

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