Vista Gold Corp. (VGZ) Q2 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Vista Gold's Second Quarter 2026 Financial Results and Corporate Update Conference Call. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. Today is Thursday, July 30, 2026. It's now my pleasure to introduce Pamela Solly, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Joanna, and good day, everyone. Thank you for joining the Vista Gold Corp. Second Quarter 2026 Financial Results and Corporate Update Conference Call. I'm Pamela Solly, Vice President of Investor Relations. Also on the call today is Fred Earnest, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Doug Tobler, Chief Financial Officer. On July 29, 2026, Vista reported its financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2026. For additional details, our full financial statements and MD&A are included in our Form 10-Q available for review at sec.gov or sedarplus.ca. Copies of the news release and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q are also 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-K 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 on 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. We will begin with an overview of our second quarter achievements and then discuss our outlook for the remainder of the year. During the second quarter, we continued to execute our strategy to develop the Mt Todd gold project on a stand-alone basis. We achieved meaningful progress on permitting, added to our Australia-based project leadership team, progressed technical optimization programs, and advanced project execution planning in line with our plans to commence detailed engineering and design in 2027. With our strong cash position at quarter end, we are well funded to continue achieving our interim project development activities while systematically reducing development risk. As we build our Australian leadership team and complete the technical and regulatory milestones ahead of us, we are positioning Mt Todd for the start of detailed engineering and design in 2027 and the commencement of an approximate 27-month period encompassing construction and commissioning. I will discuss these topics in greater detail later in the call. But I now turn the time over to Doug Tobler for a review of our financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2026.

Thanks, Fred. And for those of you on the call, thanks for joining. We very much appreciate your interest. My comments will provide a recap of our financial position and our results of operations as presented in the second quarter Form 10-Q. All the dollar amounts that I will talk about today will be in U.S. dollars. I'm pleased to report that we maintained a strong balance sheet at the end of the second quarter. We had cash on hand of $49.5 million compared to a cash balance of $13.6 million at the end of 2025. This increase in cash is based on having completed the March 2026 offering for net proceeds of $42 million, which is supporting the work that Fred will discuss during this call. And we continue to have no debt. Turning to our results of operations. For the second quarter, we reported a net loss of $3 million for the 3 months ended June 30, '26, which compares to a net loss of $2.4 million for the 3 months ended June 30, 2025. For the 6 months ended June 30, '26 and '25, we reported net losses of $6 million and $5.1 million, respectively. There were 3 main drivers of the increases in net losses for the 3- and 6-month periods ended June 30, '26. First, exploration property valuation and holding costs were $2.5 million and $1.8 million for the comparative 3 and 6 months ended June 30, 2026 and 2025, respectively, and they were $4.2 million and $3.3 million for the 6 months period ended June 30, '26 and '25, respectively. The increases in the 2026 for the 3- and 6-month periods resulted mostly from the addition of executive and project management team members in Australia and higher power costs incurred to meet our water management pumping requirements. These increases were partially offset by lower project program costs in '26 compared to the prior year when work on the Mt Todd feasibility study was in progress. Secondly, our corporate administrative costs were $850,000 and $680,000 during the 3 months ended June 30, '26 and '25, respectively, and they were $2.5 million and $2 million for the 6 months ended June 30, '26 and '25, respectively. These increases for the 3- and 6-month periods resulted from additional legal, consulting and Board costs to support our increasing predevelopment activities at Mt Todd. And finally, we partially offset the increases in costs with about $300,000 of greater interest income for the 3- and 6-month periods ended June 30, 2026. That concludes my comments for today. I'll turn the call back to you, Fred.

Thank you, Doug. The second quarter was another period of steady progress as we continue to execute our key initiatives in line with our development strategy for Mt Todd. We remain focused on achieving the important milestones that will position the project for the next phase of development. I'll begin with an update on permitting activities. Our work to obtain approvals for the permit modifications required to align existing approvals with the 2025 feasibility study is progressing as planned. We are actively working with regulators, consultants and stakeholders to obtain these modifications. Some modifications have already been submitted and programs to support other submissions are in progress. I'm pleased to report that we have received authorization for certain modifications that are expected to lead to additional approvals being granted in the second half of 2026 with final approvals anticipated in 2027. We are encouraged by this progress and are grateful for the past and ongoing work of the agencies in the Northern Territory. Turning to site dewatering. Some of you will remember that the Northern Territory received far greater than normal precipitation in the recent wet season. The inventory of water on the Mt Todd mine site is accordingly much higher than we expected. We have commenced the initial phase of a dewatering program at the Batman pit and tailings storage facility with additional phases planned to commence later this year. I'll now provide an update on the progress of our predevelopment optimization programs as they were identified in the Mt Todd feasibility study, which will support detailed engineering and further derisk the project. A comprehensive metallurgical test program to optimize grind size and gold recoveries while generating data to support process plant design and equipment selection is entering its final stages. Highlights of the initial results include confirmation of the relationship between grind size and gold recoveries across the complete range of anticipated head grades and the suitability of water collected below the waste rock dump for process makeup water. Characterization of tailings properties is also in progress. Final results of the program are anticipated late this quarter. The geotechnical program designed to evaluate opportunities to steepen the west pit wall, reduce waste stripping and potentially convert mineral resources to additional mineral reserves at depth is also nearing completion. We have also completed refinements to the site layout design and are preparing for field investigations related to tailings embankment engineering design. At the same time, we continue to advance project execution planning. Let me turn now and talk about people. We continue to build our Australia-based executive leadership and project development teams to support the next phase of the project. The executive team is based in Perth, Western Australia, with the project development team being assigned to the Northern Territory, including certain fly-in, fly-out roles. Since the beginning of this year, we have made significant progress in strengthening our corporate capabilities across key functions, including projects and technical services, external relations and social performance, legal and permitting. Recruiting is ongoing for executive and project development team members to further strengthen our project execution capabilities in Australia. As part of this effort, we are well advanced in our search for a Managing Director to be based in Australia with a proven track record in project development and building successful organizations to lead the development of Mt Todd. I now turn to safety and our environmental and social and governance commitments. During the quarter, we remain firmly committed to safety, environmental stewardship and the interest of our shareholders and stakeholders. Our site team continued to manage the Mt Todd site and successfully advanced our environmental initiatives with 0 reportable incidents. I'm pleased to report that we have commenced a new social impact assessment as part of our commitment to understand the needs and concerns of the local communities and to assist us in our project execution planning. We have also maintained our ongoing engagement with the Jawoyn Association Aboriginal Corporation and other key stakeholders. Looking ahead, we believe the key to greater shareholder value is found in the work we are doing to secure final authorizations and establish the basis for an efficient start to detailed engineering design. With this in mind, Mt Todd holds tremendous intrinsic value and represents an exceptional investment opportunity at conservative long-term gold prices with an all-in sustaining cost of $1,500 per ounce and a very conservative gold price of $3,300 an ounce, substantially less than today's price. The Mt Todd gold project will generate USD 300 million of free cash flow annually. At that same gold price, the feasibility study net asset value per share is estimated to be $14.89, nearly 9x our current share price. We have recently seen considerable volatility in the gold price. Even with this volatility, Mt Todd is positioned as one of the most attractive large resource development stage projects in the gold sector. Its strong project economics at current gold prices, favorable jurisdiction, permitting status and existing infrastructure make it well suited for near-term development. We are confident this is the right market environment in which to move Mt Todd into the next phase of development. In conclusion, Vista is committed to seeing the Mt Todd project developed in compliance with the highest mining and ESG standards and is diligently working toward that goal. For more information about Vista Gold and the Mt Todd project, I refer you to our corporate presentation, which can be found on our website at www.vistagold.com. We believe that Vista Gold represents an exceptional investment opportunity and that current prices present a tremendous opportunity to establish a position or increase one's holdings in Vista Gold. This concludes our formal remarks, and we will now respond to any questions from participants on this call.

There appear to be no questions. I will turn the call back over to Fred Earnest, President and CEO, for closing remarks.

Thank you, Joanna, and thank you to all of those who have joined the call today and who will listen to this call as in recorded form in the coming days and weeks. We're very pleased with the progress that we've achieved in the second quarter this year. We continue to have a strong balance sheet and we look forward to the activities and the ongoing execution of the strategy as we've laid out in our plan. This quarter will be a busy quarter for us with participation in a number of conferences, including the Diggers & Dealers Conference in Australia, Precious Metals Summit, the Metals Forum in Colorado Springs, as well as the Wainwright Conference in New York City. We're very excited about the opportunity to share the story, provide updates, and we encourage all to pay attention to the news in the coming weeks and months that will capture and highlight results of studies as well as successes achieved in permitting and our ongoing efforts to build an exceptional team to deliver the Mt Todd project in Australia. With that, I thank you again for your interest and your participation in the call and wish each of you a very pleasant day.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating, and we ask that you please disconnect.