Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Vista Gold's First Quarter 2020 Financial Results and Corporate Update Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. Today is Tuesday, May 3, 2022. It's now my pleasure to introduce Pamela Solly, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Chris, and good day, everyone. Thank you for joining the Vista Gold Corp. First Quarter 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 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.

Thank you, Pam, and thank you, everyone, for joining us on the call today. As announced in February, we achieved 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 of gold and extended the life of the mine to 16 years and confirmed the robust economic returns of the project even after taking into consideration the inflationary pressures being experienced on a global basis. The completion of the 2022 feasibility study represents a significant step in derisking Mt Todd and readying the project for development. We subsequently announced the appointment of CIBC Capital Markets as Vista's strategic adviser to lead a formal process to assist us in evaluating a broad range of alternatives to unlock the value of Mt Todd and in a ranging and accretive transaction. During the quarter, we also successfully completed the exploration drilling program at Mt Todd, continued to monetize core -- noncore assets and maintained the strength of our balance sheet with quarter end cash of $12.8 million. I'll 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 March 31, 2022.

Thanks, Fred, and thanks to everybody on the call. We appreciate your interest. I'm pleased to report that our first quarter financial results were in line with management's expectations. I'll start today with a brief recap of a few measures of our financial position. Our cash liquidity position is the first metric I'll discuss. At March 31, 2022, total -- cash totaled $12.8 million, as Fred mentioned, which reflected a net decrease of $300,000 during the first quarter. We benefited from net proceeds of $2.5 million for cancellation of the remaining Awak Mas royalty, and the cash inflow was largely offset by expenditures of $2.8 million. The key programs that we advanced during the most recent quarter included the additional exploration drilling, work necessary to complete the feasibility study, related engineering and design work and several other technical studies. And another important metric that we track is our working capital position, which is measured as current assets less current liabilities. Again, we performed well this quarter with working capital at $12 million at March 31, 2022, and this reflected a decline of just $200,000 during the most recent quarter. The largest offset in our working capital calculation is accounts payable. And at March 31, 2022, our payables still included remaining amounts due for several drilling and feasibility study vendors. We'll make final payments for this work during the second quarter of 2022, and then we expect our spending pattern to reduce to our more normal and typical historical level. I'll close the financial review with a brief summary of our results of operations. We reported consolidated net losses for the 3 months ended March 31, 2022 and 2021, of $320,000 and $3.1 million, respectively. The decrease in the loss for the quarter compared to last year's first quarter is almost entirely related to having a $2.5 million payment for cancellation of the remaining Awak Mas royalty. This amount, plus a previously deferred option gain of $383,000, were recognized as income. For last year's comparable period, there were no similar income amounts. Otherwise, our corporate administration and Mt Todd expenses were consistent period over period. And as noted earlier, we've now concluded our exploration drilling and feasibility study. So beginning with Q2 of this year, we expect to see our Mt Todd expenses decline back towards historical levels. That concludes my remarks. Fred, I will turn the call back over to you.

Thanks, Doug. During the quarter, we continued to advance and derisk Mt Todd and initiated a strategic process to identify and evaluate a broad range of development alternatives for the project. Let me first talk about the feasibility study. We completed a feasibility study for the Mt Todd project and announced the results on February 9 of this year and filed the S-K 1300 technical report summary and the National Instrument 43-101 technical report on February 24 of this year. The 2022 feasibility study highlights a 19% increase in gold reserves increasing from 5.85 million ounces as reported in the company's amended 2019 prefeasibility study to now 6.98 million ounces of gold, and this extends the life of the mine to 16 years. Average annual production of 479,000 ounces of gold during the first 7 years of commercial operations and a low operating cost profile that delivers significant cash flows established Mt Todd as a compelling investment opportunity. This study addressed recommendations from the 2019 preliminary feasibility study. It reflects minor updates of the project designed to be consistent with the approved mining management plan and advance the levels of engineering and detailed costing in all areas of the project. As a result of favorable trade-off study results, the feasibility study includes contract power generation, which insulates the project from certain construction and operating risk while resulting in direct economic benefit to the project. A few economic highlights from the study include an after-tax net present value at a 5% discount rate of $999.5 million or $999.5 million, to be more precise, and an IRR of 20.6% at a gold price of $1,600, the official study price. The after-tax net present value at a 5% discount rate at a $1,900 gold price is estimated to be $1.7 billion with an…

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

A question for you. You spent a good amount of time of this call going through valuation. And you think the company is worth probably more than what I've seen on most earnings calls I've been on in most of my life. Maybe just a little bit, what are analysts missing with the value gap for the company? Because clearly, something is there that is being missed. I mean I'm looking at my own model there. I'm looking at a $3 price target, and stock is obviously well below that. I'm trying to see -- maybe in phone calls that you're getting, inbound calls, what are people missing?

Well, Heiko, the last 10 days have been very, very interesting in the markets, especially in the gold sector. We briefly approached $2,000 an ounce and have since fallen $75, $80, really from what the price was before that run-up. And in the aftermath of that, we've seen the value of the company decrease by almost 25%. There's truly a tremendous disconnect between the value of Vista Gold and the value of the Mt Todd project. As I pointed out, we -- the study -- the feasibility study was completed at a very modest and conservative gold price of $1,600 and demonstrates an NPV5 of just shy of $1 billion. And at a gold price closer to today's gold price, that NPV is approximately $1.7 billion. I think the disconnect is -- lies in the uncertainty that the market has with regards to how Mt Todd will be financed and ultimately constructed. And I'm very pleased that we have already embarked on a process, as announced, with CIBC Capital Markets to identify potential opportunities and then to commence, as I've indicated, a formal process that we believe will end in a -- successfully in the completion of an accretive transaction. And I believe that once that transaction is announced, the discussion about how Mt Todd will be financed will be answered. And I believe that, that will be a very important catalyst for unlocking value for Vista's shareholders.

Okay. Okay. question also for you. What's the current -- or I guess there's a couple of questions at once. With the current spend side, maybe month by month or quarter by quarter and then also what have you encountered so far this year? I mean it's now May. And what do you think we'll see by the end of the year, please?

I'm going to let Doug answer that question, Heiko.

Yes. So you can see our first quarter results. And again, we were running 2 very heavy and important programs being the drilling and the feasibility study. As we move back down to our more normal pace, what you'll see is our recurring burn rate will be something just about $1.5 million, slightly above that on a quarterly basis. And that's a good kind of 60-40 Australia versus the corporate organization. We've got a few other programs in the works, but those will almost be lost in the rounding. So figure somewhere just north of $1.5 million a quarter.

[Operator Instructions] There are no further questions. I'd like to turn the call back to Fred.

Thank you, Chris, and thank you to all of you who have taken time to join the call this afternoon and those of you who will listen to this call a rebroadcast or as is found on our link on our website. We're in a period of time which is very exciting for Vista Gold. With the completion of the feasibility study earlier in the first quarter of this year and, subsequently, the appointment of CIBC Capital Markets as our strategic adviser, we are moving the ball forward. We are executing on the strategy that we laid out more than a year ago on how we would unlock value for shareholders. As I've indicated, the formal process has commenced, and I'm very pleased with the work that CIBC has completed to date. We invite you to watch and look forward to news. We won't be making any announcements until we have a formal announcement that can be made. But I invite you to not let time pass you by. With the gold price and our share price where they are, I believe that this is -- there's a tremendous opportunity to add to your holding in Vista Gold or to establish a position in Vista Gold if you're not presently a shareholder. If you need further information, if you would like to chat with a member of the management team, I invite you to contact Pamela Solly, our Vice President of Investor Relations. She will answer your questions, and if need to be, she will get somebody else on the phone to also talk with you. We believe that this is a tremendous opportunity, and we believe that there will be a significant opportunity for value creation and for wealth creation for shareholders who recognize the potential value and the…

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.