Vista Gold Corp. (TSX:VGZ; NYSE-A:VGZ) holds the Mount Todd Gold Project, a ready to build development stage gold deposit, located in the tier one jurisdiction of Northern Territory in Australia. The Market online recently sat down with Fred Earnest, CEO of Vista Gold.
The following is a transcription of the above video, and The Market Online has edited it for clarity.
TMO: Let’s flip this over to you. Vista Gold has had a very busy fourth quarter, and you’ve really hit the ground running here in 2025 with some exciting news. Before we talk about that, I want to kick off our conversation about assessing investment potential in the Australian gold sector specifically in the Northern Territory of Australia. Given the recent developments in the Australian gold mining sector, what should investors be aware of when they’re looking at potential gains and risks in projects like this?
Earnest: I think that the advice for the Northern Territory is not much different than any other jurisdiction in the world. You need to feel comfortable with the deposit, the geology, the people that are running it. You need to understand social issues. In the Northern Territory in Australia, we have aboriginals and a lot of aboriginal rights issues.
I think that one of the things that’s very compelling about the Northern Territory is changes in the mineral royalty structure in the last in the last nine months.
They’ve changed from a net profits interest royalty structure to an ad valorem structure in order to make the territory more attractive. This is one of those things that reduces risk, is that they’ve essentially cut the royalty rate in half. And so, where previously we would’ve paid a net profits interest royalty of somewhere between 6.5% and 8%.
Today that’s fixed at 3.5%. And so, some of those things reduce the risk. The following is a transcription of the above video, and The Market Online has edited it for clarity.
The Australian mining industry can be kind of frothy and certainly doing your homework and understanding what kind of a project you’re getting involved in and investing in beforehand is very helpful.
Certainly, when the markets do get frothy, those who are already in are the ones who stand to benefit. So do your homework.
TMO: You have completed your 2024 drill program for Mount Todd, and that brought back some very positive results.
Can you tell us a little bit about that program and what that means for Vista as well as the Mount Todd project going forward?
Earnest: We completed a little over 6,000 meters of drilling. We focused on two different areas.
The first was what we call the Batman North Extension. This is an area where most of our resources were based on historic reverse circulation drilling.
Our experience in the past has been that when we replace RC drilling with core drilling, that we see a little bit of an uptick in the grade, in the resource model, and we get much better definition on the resource boundaries, on the boundaries of the mineralized zone.
So given that the core zone, the high-grade center of the Batman deposit kind of looks like the bow of a ship. It’s coming up as we go to the north.
We felt that there was an opportunity to further define and refine what that core zone looks like with the hope that perhaps we would be looking at an opportunity to change the early life mine plans near the surface.
That was one of the targets, one of the objectives of the drilling.
The second part of the drilling program was a parallel zone to the Batman deposit that we call the South Cross Lode.
This is a much narrower structure that was the surface expression identified in historic drilling and in our drill program in 2020 – 2024, where we were, or 2020 to 2022, we were focusing on establishing continuity from the Batman deposit up to five and a half kilometers to the north.
And this structure was one that we put a couple of holes in. Ultimately, we decided to drill this over a 400-meter strike length and understand a little bit more about it.
We have at the very top of the deposit, mineralization that’s very similar to what we see in the Batman deposit. Deeper in the holes below a hundred meters, we started encountering intercepting veins like we’ve never seen before.
Our typical mineralization at the Batman deposit is a sheeted vein system. These have veins that run from millimeters in thickness to maybe 10 centimeters.
In the South Cross Lode, we started drilling and intersecting veins that range from up upwards of a half a meter to two and a half meters.
It had grades that, instead of being a gram per ton, were half a meter at 50 grams per ton.
Another hole we intersected a meter at almost 26 grams per ton, and then another hole 2.3 meters at almost 13 grams per ton.
We don’t fully understand what it really means just yet, but we are encountering concentrations of gold mineralization in thicknesses that we’ve never seen before.
This is the start of perhaps a new exploration model for some of these narrower structures that exist in the deposit area. And we’re very excited about it.
TMO: Vista Gold actually recently initiated a feasibility study for the Mount Todd project. You are looking to increase your reserve grade to one gram per ton, and decrease your initial capital expenditures by 60% to $400 million. With an annual goal production of 150,000 to 200,000 ounces.
Can you tell us a bit more about that study? As well what that strategic shift look like for the company’s financial outlook going forward from there?
Earnest: Well, you’ve highlighted the key targets for this feasibility study.
We’re looking at a 15,000 ton per day operation down. That’s from the previous work that we’ve done at 50,000 tons per day.
As you mentioned, one of the reasons is to reduce the capital cost for the project.
Previously the project had over a billion-dollar price tag. By starting with a smaller scale project, we’ll be able to build it for a target of $400 million US.
That’s a significant decrease in the capex of the project. At the same time, preserving the option to expand the project in the future at the appropriate time.
What does this mean, well you hit on the concept of improving the grade.
We’re going to raise the cutoff grade. Instead of a 0.35 gram per ton cutoff, it’s going to be something on the order of a half a gram.
That’ll get us to the point that we think our new reserve grade will be close to a gram per ton.
There’ll be a decrease in the reserve. Instead of 7 million ounces at 0.84 grams per ton it’s likely to be in the range of five or five and a half million ounces. Still a very large gold deposit.
We think that it’ll be more valuable. And so, this is a fundamental shift in the way we’re thinking about Mount Todd.
One of the things that it’ll do for us is that we’ve always said that we’re looking for a partner to develop Mount Todd. The number of companies that can write billion dollar checks after acquiring a project is pretty small group. However, when we start talking $400 million, it opens it up to the mid-tier gold producers. We think that there’ll be a tremendous increase in interest in Mount Todd,
That should equate to better valuation and more value for our shareholders.
TMO: Looking forward, what are Vista Gold’s 2025 priorities and what should investors be looking out for coming up?
Earnest: Obviously news about the feasibility study, that is job one. It was initiated and kicked off in December last year.
All of the contractors and consultants have started their work. One of the first milestones will be the completion of a new resource estimate.
So that’ll be a very important milestone.
After that, mine planning will be able to commence. With the news that we’ve announced and interestingly, some announcements in our market in our sector about acquisitions in the last quarter and the end of the year last year, there’s been a renewed interest in developers like Vista Gold.
Along with completing a feasibility study, we are attracting the interest to be able to advance the project is another key focus that we have this year.
We think that the feasibility study is just part of that. It seems that we’ve got a little bit of a tailwind in the market right now, which is very encouraging.
So those two topics are the things that investors should be watching for.
You can find Vista Gold on the NYSE American and TSX under the ticker symbol VGZ. If you would like to learn more about the company, their website is vistagold.com
Company shares last traded at $0.83
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