Vista Gold at Precious Metals Summit: Strategic Shift to Smaller Scale

On Wednesday, 10 September 2025, Vista Gold Corporation (NYSE:VGZ) presented at the 2025 Precious Metals Summit - Beaver Creek, unveiling a strategic pivot in its Mount Todd Gold Project. The company’s new feasibility study outlines a shift to a smaller, more manageable operation, cutting initial capital costs significantly. While this move aims to enhance near-term production, it also comes with reduced gold reserves.

Key Takeaways

• Vista Gold reduces initial CapEx by 59% to $425 million, focusing on a smaller scale operation.
• The new feasibility study projects an after-tax NPV of $1.1 billion at $2,500 per ounce gold.
• Average annual gold production is expected to be 153,000 ounces for the first 15 years.
• The company is exploring strategic options, including joint ventures or advancing independently.
• Vista Gold seeks to modify existing permits to accommodate the revised project scale.

Financial Results

• Initial Capital Expenditure: Reduced to $425 million, a 59% decrease from previous estimates.
• Gold Production: Projected at 153,000 ounces annually for the first 15 years, with an average grade of 1.04 grams per ton.
• Gold Reserves: Total reserves stand at 5.2 million ounces, down from 7 million ounces, reflecting a focus on higher-grade ore.
• After-tax NPV and IRR: At a gold price of $2,500 per ounce, the project boasts an NPV of $1.1 billion and an IRR of 27.8%. These figures rise significantly with higher gold prices.
• All-in Sustaining Costs (AISC): Estimated just below $1,500 per ounce over the project’s life, slightly lower for the initial 15 years.

Operational Updates

• Mining Operations: Employing conventional truck and excavator methods with a 4:1 stripping ratio. Marginal grade material is stockpiled for future processing.
• Processing Techniques: Involves three stages of crushing and two stages of grinding, achieving an 88.5% gold recovery rate through a carbon-in-leach circuit.
• Workforce and Permits: Utilizing a fly-in, fly-out workforce model, Vista Gold is pursuing minor permit modifications to fit the smaller scale project.

Future Outlook

• Strategic Options: Vista Gold is considering joint ventures, corporate transactions, or independent advancement of the project.
• Expansion Potential: The company aims to preserve opportunities for future mine expansion beyond the initial 30-year life.
• Valuation Goals: Vista Gold targets a revaluation similar to other junior gold producers, positioning itself for a significant market re-rating.

For more detailed insights, refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - 2025 Precious Metals Summit - Beaver Creek:

Unidentified speaker: Good afternoon, everyone. I’m delighted to be back at, Beaver Creek, and appreciate those of you who are here in the room to listen to, our discussion of what we’re doing at the Mount Todd Gold Project. Every once in a while, a set of circumstances arises that allows astute individuals, management teams, companies to make some very strategic shifts that can result in the creation of a significant value. I’d like to tell you about such a shift and what we’re doing about it. I will be making some forward looking statements.

I encourage you to become familiar with that. Just really quickly, the Mt Todd gold project that we’re going to talk about is located in the northern part of the Northern territory, about 250 kilometers South Southeast of Darwin, about 10 kilometers off of the Stewart Highway. The things that I would like you to take away from our fifteen minutes together this afternoon are as follows. One, that we have just recently completed a feasibility study that demonstrates a very achievable path to near term production at Mt Todd. Second, Mt Todd is Australia’s second largest undeveloped gold project, and it’s the largest gold product undeveloped gold project not held by a producer.

The 15,000 ton per day project that we’ve designed and announced results of the feasibility study in July incorporate what the Australians call fit for purpose design principles and at the same time preserves the opportunity for expansion. We prioritized grade over tons, and we prioritized significantly reducing the initial CapEx. Last of all, the project demonstrates very strong project economics, which we believe support near term development and production. Digressing for just a moment, Vista Gold trades on the NYSE American and the TSX Stock Exchange is under the symbol VGZ. We have a 125,000,000 shares issued and outstanding, $13,200,000 in cash at the present time.

Our market cap has been a good week for us. We’re approaching a market cap of a $190,000,000, and we have no debt. We enjoy the strong support of a very core group of institutional investors. I’m pleased to indicate that the Vista’s board and management’s holdings have been gradually increasing. So this new path to value realization, let me just explain for a moment where we were and where we are today.

Up through 02/2024, we had designed the Mount Todd gold project as a 50,000 ton per day operation with an initial CapEx of a little over a billion dollars. We were using a point three five gram per ton cut off grade, which is a little bit above breakeven. And that would produce on average over the life of the mine 395,000 ounces of gold per year. This strategy was dependent on being able to attract a senior producer to join us as a partner in the development of Mt Todd. Well, the last several years have indicated that first of all, the major producers are a little averse to taking on development stage projects.

And second of all, recently they’ve been much more inclined to take on mergers with other producers to increase their production profiles. And so in approximately a year ago, we started looking at or eighteen months ago, we started looking at what would a smaller scale project at Mount Todd look like. In December, our board authorized us to undertake a feasibility study at a 15,000 ton per day throughput rate or 5,300,000 tons per annum. As I said, we we targeted the significant reduction in initial capital, and we achieved a 59% reduction. We prioritized grade over tons.

We did that by first of all raising the cutoff grade to point five grams per ton. I know that goes against the logic of a lot of people, but we felt that higher grade pays more than lots of tons at low grade. We’ve adopted contract mining, a very common Australian mining practice. It’s something that we avoided for years. We’ve also continued to include third party power generation using the existing natural gas pipeline.

This has allowed us to achieve a very constant annual gold production rate over the extended life of the mine. A 153,000 ounces of gold over the first fifteen years of a thirty year mine life and a 146,000 ounces per year on average over the thirty year mine life. We’ve adopted these fit for purpose design principles. We visited Western Australia gold operations. We looked in to see how mines are built in Australia.

And rather than trying to design a North American operation that would be plopped down into the Northern Territory, we’ve adopted the same principles and practices that we saw in practice. Last of all, adapting to the times, we’ve adopted the idea that a significant part of our workforce will be at work on a fly in, fly out basis. And we’ve included a full service camp with all the amenities and our capital costs with the goal that over time that we’ll be able to increase the the amount of local employment as as the the Northern Territory government would like to see us do. So what are the results of this feasibility study? Our CapEx has dropped from over a billion dollars to 425,000,000.

As I mentioned, average gold production over the first fifteen years, a 153,000 ounces of gold per year coming from ore that’s delivered at an average grade of one point o four grams per ton. That’s a significant increase from where we were at in the previous studies, our previous thinking where we had an average deposit grade of point seven seven grams per ton. The reserve has gone down a little bit, seven or 5,200,000 ounces instead of 7,000,000 ounces, but the grade has gone up. Not all of that material is lost. The point three five to point five gram per ton material is going to be stockpiled or segregated in the waste rock dump, and it will be able to be processed at some future time.

The resource has grown. We’ve conducted drilling programs in 2020, ’21, ’22, and ’24. The results of those studies have been incorporated into the new resource assessment. The economics. We used the $2,500 gold price for for base project economics.

And at that gold price, the after tax NPV at a 5% discount rate is $1,100,000,000 US with a 27.8% after tax IRR. If we raise that gold price to $3,300 an ounce, the NPV goes to $2,200,000,000, and the IRR gets very close to 45%. Our all in sustaining cost over the life of the project is is estimated to be 50 just shy of $1,500 an ounce US. For the first fifteen years, it’s just shy of of $14.50. Compared to all of the universe of Australian gold producers, this is just a little below the median.

It’s a very solid number. I feel very comfortable in it. Sure. We’d love to have lowest quartile all in sustaining costs, but I believe these numbers are realistic. And so I’m very happy with the results of the study.

Now as I indicated, we raised the cutoff grade. That resulted in an increase in the reserve grade of 23. I’m not going to go into the details. You can all read the numbers on the slide here. But basically, we’ve seen an increase in resources, and we’ve seen a significant increase in grade of proven and probable reserves.

From a mining and processing side, this is going to be a very standard, very conventional Australian gold operation. Everybody thinks that Mount Todd is difficult for some reason, and I’m here to tell you that on the mining side, this is gonna be a conventional truck and actually excavator operation, drilling and blasting on 12 meter benches, mining on six meter benches. Our pit slopes have been reevaluated, and we think there’s perhaps an opportunity for a little bit of improvement there. I mentioned that we’re gonna stockpile this intermediate or or this marginal grade material. Actually amounts to about 900, almost a million ounces that we’re gonna put in the corner of the of the the waste rock dump and not process at the present time.

The stripping ratio for the pit will be four to one. On the processing side, we’re going to use stockpiling to deliver higher and consistent grades to the process plant. Those of you who know the project will remember that in years past, at the larger scale, we had a very significant drop in our production profile in years six, seven, eight, and ’9, and then it came back up. Very happy to report that we’ve stabilized that with the new mine plans and this throughput rate. We’ve been able to achieve a nearly constant 153,000 ounce per year production rate over the first half of the mine life.

The process flow sheet itself is very simple. Three stages of crushing, a gyratory crusher, secondary cones, and third stage HPGR crushers. We’re getting dropped one stage of sorting, and we may even ultimately drop sorting altogether. Two stages of grinding to produce a final product of 80% passing 40 microns, allows us to achieve an 88 and a half percent average gold recovery with a carbon and leach recovery circuit. So what are the next steps?

Well, right now, having just released this these results in July, we’re on a mission to broadly increase the awareness of the value of the Mt Todd gold project. I’ve seen a lot of a lot of resistance to this project based on its past history and the fact that it was so big that many people thought that it would not get built. I believe that at 15,000 tons, which is a very common size and the gold production rate at a 150,000 ounces a year, more or less, that we fit into a a very common band and it becomes much more achievable when we look at what can be built in Australia. This is leading to this this increasing awareness is leading to our interest to advance interest in a strategic transaction. And I’ll talk about the three pathways that we see forward in just But at the same time, we’ve already begun some activities that will benefit and add value to the project.

With this smaller scale, there’s some minor modifications that need to be made to our existing permits for the project. We hold the permits for the development of a 50,000 ton per day operation. The west side of the pit has gone outside of the limits of that permit just a little bit, and we’re right now pursuing the modifications that we need to to be able to undertake a the the the project as designed. There’s also some testing and evaluation that’s been identified as a result of the feasibility study, which will lead to the start of detailed engineering. So why should you be interested in Mt Todd and and Vista Gold in particular?

Well, simply stated, there’s a very significant rerating that happens when companies transition from developers to producers. We have a premier asset in a tier one mining jurisdiction. With this new study, we’ve demonstrated very strong project economics, and we believe we’ve demonstrated a very achievable path to near term production. We’ve preserved opportunities for future expansion. And the strategic paths that are now open to us include a joint venture to develop the project with either an operating or a strategic partner, Realizing that some potential partners may not want to have a partner, we’re open to a corporate or other asset level transaction if it appropriately rewards our shareholders.

We’re not going to do a deal at a 35% premium to our market cap. We can advance and build Mt Todd on our own, and that’s a huge change. That opportunity has really not been available to us in the past. When it was a billion dollar project, it was just out of reach. So what happens when you become a producer?

The chart on the right shows our reserve and project valuation or company valuation compared to junior gold producers in Australia. And what you see is that we have the largest reserve and probably the smallest market cap. As transition to being a producer via one of these strategic paths, we see the opportunity for a tremendous re rate. At the minimum, we think that we can achieve a valuation like Catalyst or Bellevue. And and aspirationally, we seek to have a valuation much like Capricorn.

Went the wrong way. In conclusion, these are the things I’d like you to to take away from our fifteen minutes together this afternoon. Vista has laid the groundwork for a new path to project and and value realization at Mount Todd. We’ve designed it as an Australian project for near term production. I believe it’s right sized.

We think we have an attractive development option. The grade is certainly more attractive at a gram than it was at point seven seven grams per ton. The huge reduction in capital cost is to our favor. Steady gold production means that it’s more easy to finance. We may have maintained the leverage to gold price.

It’s one of the things that we’ve always enjoyed at Mt Todd. With this new new feasibility study in smaller scale, the the economics that I’ve demonstrated at 2,500 and $3,300 an ounce demonstrate the the leverage that we enjoy. We’ve preserved the opportunity to expand. We know that a thirty year mine life isn’t optimal, but we believe that once it’s built, that an expansion will happen, and the market will determine when, where, how big. We’ve reduced development and operating risk through the use of outs firms with outstanding reputations like GR Engineering Services or simply GRES and the command the contract miner that we’ve selected.

We’ve opted for reduced risk with the workforce through using a fly in, fly out workforce, and we’ve opened the doors to a variety of development options. I know I’m out of time. Thank you very much for your interest. I’ll be outside in the hallway. If anybody has any questions, I’d be happy to answer them there.

Thank you.

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