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Vista Gold Corp. (VGZ)

Q4 2022 Earnings Call· Mon, Feb 27, 2023

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Vista Gold's 2022 Financial Results and Corporate Update Conference 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 Monday, February 27, 2023. It's now my pleasure to introduce Pamela Solly, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Pamela Solly

Analyst

Thank you, Julie, and good day, everyone. Thank you for joining the Vista Gold Corp. 2022 financial results and corporate update conference call. I'm Pamela Solly, Vice President of Investor Relations. On the call today is Fred Earnest, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Doug Tobler, Chief Financial Officer. During the call or 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-K for details 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 call over to Fred Earnest.

Frederick Earnest

Analyst

Thank you, Pam, and thank you everyone for joining us on the call today. During 2022, we successfully completed a feasibility study for the Mt Todd gold project, retained CIBC Capital Markets as a strategic advisor, concluded an 18-month drilling program, significantly reduced costs and ended the year with reported cash of US$8.1 million and zero debt. We believe these accomplishments advanced Mt Todd's reserve size, resource growth potential, economic returns and attractiveness to interested parties. We remain committed to the health and safety of our employees who completed 2022 with no lost time accidents and to our environmental stewardship at Mt Todd. As previously reported, we are completing the evaluation of a smaller scale project at Mt Todd and believe that demonstrating a viable development strategy with lower initial costs will attract new interested parties and appeal to those who have previously expressed interest in the optionality of Mt Todd under different development strategies. 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 year ended December 31, 2022.

Douglas Tobler

Analyst

Thank you, Fred, and to those of you on the call today, thank you for joining us and your interest in Vista Gold. I'll start today with a recap of our year-over-year results of operations. Vista reported a net loss of $4.9 million for 2022 as compared to a net loss of $15.2 million in 2021. This represents a $10.3 million reduction, which can be explained by just a few items. First, we had a larger gain during 2022 from the sale of non-core assets than we did in 2021. In early 2022, we booked income of $2.9 million as we closed out our sale of the Awak Mas project in Indonesia. By comparison, we had a gain of $2.1 million in 2021 related to the final payments received by Vista for the Los Reyes project in Mexico. Now, from an expense side, we saw an overall reduction in site-related recurring expenses at Mt Todd. These costs were down $3.4 million from $7.9 million in 2021, down to $4.5 million in 2022. Several factors played into this reduction. First, we reduced the staffing costs at Mt Todd by about 13%. This came about through attrition and then decisions not to replace certain positions. We had also achieved a milestone in 2021 by substantially dewatering the Batman pit, which resulted in reduced pumping costs in 2022. Our exploration and evaluation costs from Mt Todd were also lower in 2022. These costs are largely at our discretion and reflect programs that we believe add value to Mt Todd. In 2021, we incurred $4.1 million for these costs compared to $1.4 million in 2022. The decrease in 2022 resulted mostly from Vista completing two major programs. First, the drilling program that ran throughout 2021 wrapped up during the first quarter of 2022. This…

Frederick Earnest

Analyst

Thank you, Doug for that excellent review. I'll begin with a review of our 2022 achievements and then provide an outlook for the remainder of the year. In February of last year, we completed a significant milestone with the completion of the feasibility study for our 100% owned Mt Todd Gold Project, which increased gold reserves by 19% to 6.98 million ounces and extended the mine life to 16 years with an estimated average annual production of 479,000 ounces of gold during the first seven years of commercial operations of that 16-year mine life. We believe the feasibility study affirms the strength of Mt Todd's production capacity, ability to deliver robust economics with significant cash flows and resilience to inflation. For more details about the feasibility study and its results, please refer to our February 9, 2022 news release and feasibility study webcast or download a copy of either the SK 1300 or National Instrument 43-101 compliant report, both of which can be found on our website @www.vistagold.com. In March of last year, we appointed CIBC Capital Markets as our strategic advisor to assist in evaluating a broad range of alternatives to unlock value at the Mt Todd Gold Project. CIBC's mandate includes leading a process to complete an accretive transaction with the objective of maximizing shareholder value. The strategic process with CIBC, which is ongoing and remains a top priority, continues to generate interest and positive feedback on the technical merits of Mt Todd. We've recently seen an uptick in M&A activity in our sector, but interested parties continue to maintain a cautious approach to new large-scale development projects. We remain focused on completing the right transaction, one that creates value by recognizing a greater portion of the present value of Mt Todd and provides ample opportunity for future…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Fred, there are no questions at this time.

Frederick Earnest

Analyst

All right, Julie. Well, perhaps we covered everything in sufficient detail that there are no questions, but I would just like to take a moment to thank everyone for their time this afternoon. As I indicated in our prepared remarks, we're very excited about the work that's being done to evaluate a smaller scale initial project for Mt Todd with the potential to see an easier to build project with significantly lower initial capital costs. I, again, encourage everybody to be attentive to announcements that are made. We will be attending the PDAC Conference in Toronto, Canada next week. We look forward to a number of face-to-face, one-on-one meetings with both present shareholders, potential shareholders, as well as those who we have met with previously with regards to potential transactions. We thank you for your time. We encourage you to seriously consider if this would be an appropriate time for you to make an investment in Vista Gold, and we look forward to the news that will come in the coming weeks and months. With that, I wish all of you a very pleasant afternoon and good day.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for joining and you may now disconnect your lines.