Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Vista Gold's Second Quarter 2024 Financial Results and Corporate Update Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode.[Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. Today is Tuesday, July 30, 2024. It is now my pleasure to introduce Pamela Solly, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Jenny, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining the Vista Gold Corp. second quarter 2024 and 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. At the close of business yesterday, Vista reported its second quarter 2024 operating and financial results. Copies of the news release and quarterly report on Form 10-Q are 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-Q for details of 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. Vista controls one of the most attractive goal -- one of the most attractive large gold deposits in one of the most attractive mining jurisdictions in the world. This is committed to seeing its development in keeping with the highest mining and ESG standards when the time is right, and we'll work diligently toward that goal. Our success is important to the Northern Territory, the people and families of the project area, and ultimately, to Vista shareholders. On the call today, we will help you understand current activities that are designed to help us create greater value in the rising -- in the current rising gold price environment. But first, let me share with you a few of our achievements during the second quarter of this year. We received the final installment payment under the royalty transaction with Wheaton Precious Metals, finished Phase 1 of our 2024 drilling program and commenced Phase 2 and enhanced our management team with the addition of Maria Vallejo Garcia as our new Director of Projects and Technical Services. We also announced that the Northern Territory Government of Australia passed legislation to enact the Mineral Royalties Act of 2024, which became effective on July 1st, 2024. The new Mineral Royalties Act replaced the prior net profits royalty regime with an ad valorem royalty regime for new mines and is expected to positively impact project economics for Vista's Mt Todd gold project. For the remainder of this year, we will focus on maintaining a strong balance sheet, advancing evaluations of an initially smaller scale Mt Todd project, continuing our work to maximize shareholder value and successfully execute our health, safety, and environmental initiatives. I'm pleased to report that we have had no lost time accidents year-to-date, and the Mt. Todd site has now reached 991 consecutive accident-free days. I will discuss some of 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 June 30th, 2024.

Thank you, Fred. I'd like to start today's financial presentation, with a recap of our balance sheet. In June, we received the final $10 million installment under the Wheaton royalty agreement. With this final installment, we've now received the full $20 million and are using these funds on our ongoing drilling program and upcoming evaluations of an initially smaller scale project at Mt Todd. We ended the second quarter with cash totaling $20.2 million, and we continue to have no debt. I'll now provide a review of our results of operations for the three and six-month periods ended June 30, 2024, compared to the same periods in 2023. First, I'll address the three months period ended June 30, 2024 and 2023. Vista reported consolidated net income of $15.6 million during the most recent quarter of 2024, compared to a consolidated net loss of $1.5 million for 2023. Net income for the 2024 period resulted mostly from a gain of $16.9 million on the grant of a royalty interest in mineral titles to Wheaton. This gain included the previously deferred gain on installment payments totaling $10 million plus the $10 million received in June 2024 for the final installment, all of this being net of the -- of the associated mineral property carrying costs of $3.1 million as of the date the final installment was received. Partially offsetting this gain were Mt Todd site costs and corporate administrative expenses of $645,000 and $763,000 for the 2024 and 2023 periods, respectively. Each of these expense categories, were slightly lower than those of 2023. The net loss of $1.5 million for 2020 -- for the 2023 three-month period was largely comprised again of Mt Todd site and corporate administrative expenses, of $682,000 $878,000, respectively. Of note, costs associated with our ongoing development drilling…

Thank you, Doug. I'll begin with our second quarter achievements, followed by our outlook for the remainder of year. As many of you know, in December of 2023, we completed a $20 million royalty transaction with Wheaton Precious Metals. And as Doug has reported, in June, we received the final $10 million installment payment under that royalty agreement. All payments have now been received, which has significantly strengthened our balance sheet. With regards to the drilling program, in June of this year, we completed Phase 1 of our 2024 drill program, which consists of 11 holes and totaled almost 3,000 meters. These holes are part of the 6,000 to 7,000 meters of drilling planned for this year. Detailed results from Phase 1 are expected to be announced in August. Phase 2 of the drilling program commenced in July and is expected to be completed by year-end. Phase 1 focused on defining the limits of mineralization at the north end of the Batman deposit and confirming the grade in this area. We are evaluating the last assays at this time. Phase 2 is concentrating on defining the south cross-load structure. This structure trends from the center of the Batman deposit to the Northeast and was intersected in a couple of holes in the 2020 and 2022 drill programs. Historic drilling on the South cross loads suggests a narrow, mineralized structure with potentially higher grades than those typically observed in the Batman deposit. The 2024 drilling program is expected to have an all-in cost of approximately $2 million with regards to the Northern Territory Minerals Royalty Act. In June, we announced that the Northern Territory government had passed legislation to enact the Mineral Royalties Act of 2024 with an effective date of July 1, 2024. This replaced the prior net profits royalty…

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Your first question is from Heiko Ihle from H.C. Wainwright. Please ask your question.

Hello, Fred and team. How are you? Thanks for taking my questions.

Hi. Heiko. Good afternoon. Thank you for being on the call.

Always. Okay. So you just got the final $10 million from Wheaton gets you $20 million in the bank. Can you maybe just walk people through what you plan to do with some of this extra cash now that the royalty deal is done? I mean, is there any specific things that you plan on doing? Any spends that are going to happen at a higher rate now that more money is in the bank?

Yeah, Heiko, it's Doug here. I'll try to answer that. So split it into a couple of different buckets. The first is our recurring costs. which is basically the core of our holding costs for Mt Todd and our corporate G&A. And those costs have been running at on the order of $6 million a year for about 2.5 years now, including not going up through all the inflation. So we don't see a big change in what's happening with core of the organization. As to other spending, of course, we'll have the spending on drilling, which Fred said, will be ballpark $2 million this year. And I don't have anything today that would tell me it would go over that. We seem to be tracking right on plan. And secondly, of course, later in the year, as we come close to the end of the drilling program, we'll pick up on doing some -- the start of the studies. First, there will be some trade-off studies, then we'll move into the technical report itself. So the balance of this calendar year in addition to the $2.5 million of -- sorry, $2 million of drilling will probably be another somewhere between $500,000 and $1 million this year, then we'll wrap up the feasibility study in the first half of next year. So that's probably another $1 million to $1.5 million total. So outside of our normal burn rate and what we're doing to put this smaller scale initial plan together, there's really no significant spending changes expected.

Heiko, I would just add to that just because we've got money in the door doesn't mean that we feel a great need to spend it. We'll continue our capital preservation practice and seek to maximize value from the money that we spend.

Fred, you know, I respect the way you spend money quite a bit. Okay. So you got the 3.5% royalty of revised one on Mt Todd. I mean, your numbers have it as a nearly 50% reduction in payable royalties overall. Can you maybe walk us through the timing of when money then gets sent to the government once this thing is actually in production? Is it more front loaded, more back loaded? Can you maybe just give some color to the listeners on this call and what you expect to see?

Yeah, Heiko, I'll take that again. In simple terms, it's 3.5% ad valorem. So take your gross revenue number times 3.5%. That will be flat-lined across the entire life of mine. So basically, you can see the $765 million that's in the current study. That just gets completely replaced by something that's down in the $350 million to $400 million range. So roughly a $350 million reduction over life of mine. But it's -- there's no holiday or payback period at all involved in this given the cut that they made, they just keep it nice and flat.

Heiko, the other thing that this new royalty structure does is that it is removed some of the complexities of -- that were involved in the net profits calculation and puts most mines on an even footing where you'll be paying a royalty that's based on the value of reproduction across all sectors. And that's something that the previous NT royalty regime did not provide was that transparency, nor was it competitive compared to other jurisdictions. So we believe that this is a tremendous step forward towards simplification and competitiveness. And certainly, we believe that there will be some incentives that accrue from this for the development of mining projects and subsequently rewards for the Northern Territory.

Thanks so much. I will get back in queue.

Okay. Thank you, Heiko.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] There are no further questions at this time. 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 joined the call today. I would just like to reiterate a core part of the message that we would like you to take away. And that is that Vista Gold controls one of the most attractive large gold deposits in one of the most stable and mining-friendly jurisdictions in the world. We are committed to seeing its development in keeping with the highest mining and ESG standards. But we'll do so when the time is right and we will work diligently toward that goal in the interim. Our success is important not only to the Northern Territory and the people and families of the project area, but ultimately to Vista shareholders. In the current rising gold price environment, we believe that thoughtful evaluations and a focus on minimizing shareholder risk will ultimately help us create and realize greater value for all stakeholders. Our primary objective is to achieve a valuation for Mt Todd that is reflective of the intrinsic value of the project that recognizes the favorable operating cost and the robust project economics is demonstrated by the updated feasibility study. And those studies, which we'll be undertaking in the coming months and concluding, as Doug indicated, the first part of next year. We would like to thank all of you for joining the call. We invite you to learn more about Vista Gold and the Mt Todd project. If you need further information, please feel free to reach out to Pamela Solly, our Vice President of Investor Relations. I invite you all to give serious consideration to how an investment in Vista Gold are increasing your holding in Vista Gold might be opportunity for greater value creation in the future. With that, I thank all of you and wish you all a very pleasant afternoon.

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