Is Contango Silver & Gold Inc. (CTGO) a good stock to buy?
Two or more of our tested checks point the wrong way. When the survival check is one of them, no price makes that acceptable.
What each rating means, in numbers
Can it survive? — Risky. Safer than 21% of the companies we cover, judged on the warning signs that came before companies that really did fail.
Business quality — Middling. Passes 5 of the 7 health checks we can measure — things like making a profit, turning it into cash, and not piling on debt. Across 131,000 company-quarters the weakest scorers went on to fail at 5.4% against 1.4% for the strongest, in every era and all twelve sectors.
How wild is the price? — Wild. The share price swings about 54% in a typical year, which puts it in the above average. Out of every 100 companies that swung like this, about 3.7 went bankrupt within the year. Across the three periods we tested that ran from 0.9% to 5.7%.
What "tested" means here, and why there is no score out of 100
Tested means the read was measured against what actually happened afterwards, on a history that keeps the companies that were later delisted, using only figures that had been filed on the day they are used. Survival was ranked on companies that really did fail. What an owner keeps was tested across the universe from 2011 to 2025.
The full record of everything we have tested is on the research pages.
Which benchmark. Over the period we tested, the median listed company returned +5.8% a year while the S&P 500 returned about +13.9% — the index is weighted by size and was carried by a handful of enormous winners. So "beats the index" and "beats the other companies you could have bought" are different questions. Where a read says it picks better companies, it means the second one. None of these gets you an index fund's return, and we would rather say that than imply otherwise.
The quality read is the strongest thing we have tested: 131,000 company-quarters across 5,300 companies, where the weakest scorers went on to fail at 5.4% against 1.4% for the strongest, holding in every era and all twelve sectors. It still says less likely to break, not likely to beat the market — every band in that study lost to the index at the median, because the median listed company does.
Each read is shown on its own rather than merged into a single score, so you can see which part is strong and which is weak instead of taking an average on trust.
▾ What goes into the smart-money reading
Contributions (weight × component score) sum to the total. This near-term score now includes fundamental health (leverage, FCF trend). See the Financial Health section for the full balance-sheet read.
Chance the S&P 500 falls 10% or more in the next three months.
Counted from every day since 2006. Says nothing about CTGO — see the board for how it is measured.
📍 Where to start on this page, and what to look at first
How to read CTGO (cyclical commodity producer)
A miner or energy producer earns whatever the commodity price is, so a single DCF swings with the cycle. Judge it against peers and where you think the commodity cycle is heading.
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1
EV/Sales peer comparison ↓
How the price compares to similar producers is more meaningful than a through-cycle DCF.
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2
Interactive calculator (test cycle assumptions) ↓
Flex the growth/discount inputs to see how sensitive the value is to where we are in the cycle.
Standard DCF doesn't fit CTGO well — but that's expected for this kind of business. The EV/Sales Peer Comparison below uses the metrics actually used by analysts who value gold & silver mining. Reverse DCF + Football Field also work as cross-checks.
Miners, metals and energy producers earn whatever the commodity price is at the time. A discounted-cash-flow model leans on recent cash flow, so it swings with the cycle: the result is dominated by where we are in the commodity cycle rather than by durable business economics.
For this business type, lean on the EV/Sales peer comparison and Reverse-DCF below (how today's price compares to similar producers and what growth it implies), and weigh the commodity-price outlook. Treat the DCF number as a rough mid-cycle reference, not a buy/sell trigger.
Who owns CTGO, and how it moves
From the SEC's own filings: every fund manager over $100M reports its holdings each quarter, and every officer and director reports theirs. Each point is what was public at the time.
118 institutions reported holding it at the latest quarter-end.
Riskier than 79% of the stocks we cover
What this rating means, and what it does not
What this rank is — Risky. Riskier than 79% of the companies we cover. Out of every 100 companies ranked here, about 0.8% went bankrupt within the year, against 0.6% for the average company we cover. The rank comes from a model trained on every US filing since 2012, including 823 companies that really did fail, and scored each year by a version that had not seen that year.
What it is not — Not a trade. We tested shorting these names and buying puts, spreads, straddles and condors on them at real option prices, 2010-2025. Every version lost money: the market already prices the distress and the survivors squeeze. A high rank is a reason to read the filings and to size for a total loss, not a reason to bet against the company. A low rank says the balance sheet is calm, not that the price is sensible.
▾ The numbers, the logic, and why not to trade on it
The logic. A model trained on every US filing since 2012 — including 823 companies that went bankrupt or stopped trading under a dollar — ranks each covered stock by its chance of failing in the next year, from its latest filing, price history and credit conditions. The rank is a position among peers; the table is a count of what happened to stocks in each position, scored each year by a model that had not seen that year.
| Rank band | went bankrupt within 12 months | fell 80% or more (or failed) within 12 months | fell 50% or more (or failed) within 6 months |
|---|---|---|---|
| All covered stocks (average) | 0.59% | 4.21% | 8.51% |
| Other (construction, transport, services) (sector average) | 0.48% | 3.35% | 7.44% |
| riskiest 1% | 16.4% | 33.0% | 45.5% |
| next 2% (97-99) | 5.9% | 24.9% | 38.2% |
| next 2% (95-97) | 3.4% | 21.2% | 33.8% |
| next 5% (90-95) | 1.6% | 15.1% | 27.3% |
| next 15% (75-90) ← this stock | 0.8% | 8.5% | 17.8% |
| next 25% (50-75) | 0.2% | 2.7% | 6.2% |
| safest half | <0.1% | 0.5% | 2.1% |
Why not to trade on it. We tested shorting these names and buying puts, spreads, straddles and condors on them at real option prices, 2010–2025: every version lost money. The market already prices the distress, and the survivors squeeze. Use a high rank to read the filings and to size for a total loss — not to bet against the company. A low rank says the balance sheet is calm, not that the price is sensible.
Scored from the most recent SEC filing we had (dated 2026-05-15), which can be a quarterly report newer than the yearly figures used elsewhere on this page; scores last updated 2026-09-18. Within Other (construction, transport, services): rank 78 of 100. Rough one-year odds for this stock alone: bankruptcy 0.4%, an 80% fall 6.2% (the model overstates the middle of the range).
▾ The logic, and why not to buy on it
The logic. Trained on 2,900 acquisitions since 2012, the model leans on size (small), age, retained earnings, asset growth, volatility and how many deals the sector has just seen. Announcement = the day the stock jumped, not the day the paperwork was filed.
| top 1% | 15.4% acquired within a year |
| next 2% (97-99) | 10.3% acquired within a year |
| next 2% (95-97) | 9.0% acquired within a year |
| next 5% (90-95) | 7.3% acquired within a year |
| next 15% (75-90) ← this stock | 6.4% acquired within a year |
| next 25% (50-75) | 4.8% acquired within a year |
| bottom half | 3.0% acquired within a year |
Why not to buy on it. A takeover paid a median +22% on the day — but even in the top band about 6 in 7 companies are not bought, and those lag. Buying the whole top list returned what the S&P 500 did (2012–2023), and adding "cheap" or "beaten-down" filters did not change that. Read it as context for a thesis you already have, never as the thesis.
How does CTGO stack up against its closest peers?
We take the 8 same- or closely-related-industry companies closest in size to CTGO and check what investors are paying for each dollar of their revenue (or profits). If CTGO is much more expensive on the same yardstick, that's a red flag — unless you have a specific reason it deserves a premium. For a leveraged business, FCF yield (in the table) is usually more reliable than EV/Sales, because revenue multiples ignore differences in margins and debt.
▾ What's "EV / Sales" in plain English?
EV (Enterprise Value) = market cap + total debt − cash. It's "what you'd pay to buy the entire company outright" — you pay the market cap to shareholders and take over their debt, but you keep their cash. EV is fairer than market cap alone because it includes the debt the new owner inherits.
EV / Sales = EV ÷ annual revenue. So "2.5×" means investors pay $2.50 of enterprise value per $1 of yearly sales. Higher = market is paying more per dollar of sales (usually because they expect future growth or fat margins).
p25 / median / p75 are the 25th, 50th (middle), and 75th percentile of the peers' multiples. Half the peers fall between p25 and p75. The median (p50) is the typical peer — that's the benchmark we compare to.
Bold middle number = median peer. Half the peers trade above it, half below. Computed over 8 same-industry peers; implausible multiples excluded.
⚠️ Important caveat: peer multiples only work if the peers are genuinely comparable. Always check the peer list below — if the auto-picker grabbed micro-caps or unrelated businesses, the comparison is noise. A medical-device giant priced against tiny biotech startups won't produce a useful signal.
▾ View peer list (8)
| Ticker | Company | Industry | Mcap | EV/Sales | EV/GP | EV/EBIT | FCF Yield |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NVA | Nova Minerals Corp | Gold & Silver Mining | $207M | — | — | — | 0.2% |
| GLDG | GoldMining Inc. | Gold & Silver Mining | $216M | — | — | — | — |
| GORO | GOLD RESOURCE CORP | Gold & Silver Mining | $225M | 2.3x | 8.4x | — | 3.0% |
| PLG | PLATINUM GROUP METALS LTD | Gold & Silver Mining | $153M | — | — | — | 0.7% |
| TII | Titan Mining Corp | Gold & Silver Mining | $292M | 4.1x | — | — | 0.0% |
| SBMT | SILVER BOW MINING CORP. | Gold & Silver Mining | $295M | — | — | — | — |
| VOXR | VOX ROYALTY CORP. | Gold & Silver Mining | $312M | 25.9x | 31.0x | — | 1.2% |
| AREC | American Resources Corp | Silver Ores | $191M | — | — | — | 0.6% |
Quality & solvency checks
Cheap stocks can be cheap for a reason. These screens warn when a low valuation comes paired with structural fragility.
What these health ratings mean, in numbers
Business quality — Middling. Passes 5 of the 7 health checks we can measure — things like making a profit, turning it into cash, and not piling on debt. Across 131,000 company-quarters the weakest scorers went on to fail at 5.4% within a year against 1.4% for the strongest, and that held in every era and all twelve sectors. It says "less likely to break", not "likely to beat the market".
Why it matters: Cheap-looking stocks (low P/E or P/B) often have low Z-scores because the market knows the company is dying. Z-score warns you before you fall into a value trap.
Reference: > 3.0 = safe zone · 1.81–3.0 = grey zone · < 1.81 = distress zone
Full explanation →
The Z-score needs working capital, retained earnings, EBIT, sales and total assets from the latest balance sheet, and at least one of those isn't reported in machine-readable form here — common for foreign private issuers. We leave it blank rather than compute a distress verdict from an estimated input. It doesn't affect the reported figures in the financial tables below.
▾ The checks — what passed, what didn't (and what we couldn't measure)
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✗ Positive net incomeNet income -$36.1M in FY2025.Why this matters: Does the company actually earn a profit? Sustained losses eventually force it to raise money — diluting you — or take on debt.
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✓ Positive operating cash flowOperating cash flow $25.7M (was $0.7M the prior year).
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✓ Cash flow backs up reported profitOperating cash flow $25.7M vs net income -$36.1M.
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✓ Return on assets improvingReturn on assets -21.0% vs -28.4% a year ago.
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✓ Debt load (vs assets)Long-term debt is 17.4% of assets vs 19.7% a year ago ($29.9M of $172.0M assets).
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✓ Short-term liquidity (current ratio)Current ratio 0.90x vs 0.29x a year ago — improved, but still below 1.0: the ✓ grades the trend, the level remains a caution flag.
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✗ Share count (dilution)Share count rose 18.4% (10.9M → 12.9M year-over-year).Why this matters: Issuing lots of new shares splits the pie into more pieces, shrinking your slice. Stable or falling share count protects existing owners.
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· Pricing power (gross margin) (n/a — data not reported; not scored)
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· Sales per asset (asset turnover) (n/a — data not reported; not scored)
Missing data is never counted as a pass or a fail — it's shown as n/a and excluded from the denominator. Each check compares the company against its own prior year.
Contango Silver & Gold Inc. The market may be paying up for potential future discoveries or resource expansion not yet reflected in current cash flows, despite the company's negative net income and a current ratio below 1. The biggest risk to our model's base assumptions is that operating cash flow, which was positive latest but only positive 2/5 years, declines from its current $25.7 million level.
As of today
Anatomy of a share
What you're buying per share. Bars are at the same scale so you can see the relative size of revenue, costs, cash flow, and debt — not just read them in a table.
What's free cash flow / what do these mean?
Revenue per share — how much the business earns from customers, divided by the number of shares outstanding. Top of the income statement.
Earnings per share — profit left after operating costs, interest, and taxes, per share. Two versions appear on this page and are not interchangeable: GAAP diluted EPS uses the company's weighted-average diluted share count during the reporting period (this is the "earnings" in "price-to-earnings"); net income per current share divides annual net income by today's share count. They differ whenever the share count has changed.
Owner-earnings free cash flow per share — the cash the business produces for shareholders. Savng's owner-earnings FCF subtracts capital expenditures and stock-based compensation from operating cash flow (SBC is a real dilution cost even though it's non-cash). This is deliberately more conservative than "standard" FCF, which subtracts only capital expenditures — so our figure is lower than the headline FCF you'll see elsewhere. FCF funds dividends, buybacks, debt repayment, and acquisitions; a company can report positive earnings yet negative FCF.
Debt per share — total interest-bearing borrowings divided by shares. High debt-per-share next to thin FCF-per-share is a fragility signal.
What you actually need to decide
Every stock price is a disagreement. Here's the single thing that must go right for the bulls, the single thing that breaks the thesis, and the concrete signposts to watch so you can update your view as real results arrive.
- Quarterly operating cash flow trends
- Updates on new resource discoveries or reserve estimates
- Changes in total debt and current ratio
The trend, in plain numbers (FY2024 → FY2025, latest reported)
Straight from the financial statements — no model, no opinion. For a small or unprofitable company, the direction of these numbers usually tells you more than any single valuation.
- Free cash flow turned positive at $22.4M.
- Still unprofitable at -$36.1M — loss narrowing.
Nothing was clearly worsening year-over-year.
Management & Leadership
Nieuwenhuyse Rick Van serves as the President & CEO, with Michael Aaron Clark as the CFO. Other key executives include David Gregory Larimer as VP Exploration and Shawn Khunkhun as President and Director.
President & CEO
CFO
VP Exploration
President and Director
What They Make
Contango Silver & Gold Inc. is engaged in the mining of gold and silver. They generate revenue from the sale of these precious metals to various buyers in the commodities market.
End Markets
Revenue Drivers
Why Is It Priced Like This?
Why Customers Pay
What we use instead: earnings (P/E, EV/EBIT), book value (P/B) — computed from the figures this company does report, shown in the sections below. Those numbers are unaffected by the missing cash-flow data.
This optimism persists despite negative net income in the latest fiscal year and a current ratio of 0.9, which indicates current liabilities exceed liquid assets.
Business Model & Valuation
How They Make Money
The company funds itself through a mix of operating cash flow and potentially debt, as total debt has been rising from $0M to $30M, and net income was -$36.1 million in the latest fiscal year.
Normalized FCF
This is the model the pipeline would normally apply to a company like this. Its output failed our checks here, so no intrinsic value is published; the notes below are context, not a valuation.
Show advanced inputs
| Sector Default | 5.0% |
| Sector Default Source | Basic Materials sector default |
| Best Estimate | 5.0% |
| Method | sector_default |
| Growth Basis | total |
What this model does NOT do: this is a consolidated owner-earnings cash-flow model. Standalone segment assumptions: none. It does not project production volumes, realized commodity prices and unit cash costs independently; their combined effect is embedded in the historical revenue and cash-flow trend the model extrapolates. The calculator above can only approximate a segment's impact through the single consolidated growth rate — it cannot model any one line separately. For a true segment-level view, build a separate model from the company's segment disclosures.
Maturity & Competitive Position
Moat Signals
Net income was negative in the latest fiscal year, being profitable in 0/5 years, while operating cash flow was positive in the latest fiscal year, being positive in 2/5 years.
Geography & Markets
Geographic Risks
Market Signals
These are timing signals, not value signals — they describe the stock's recent price behavior, not what the business is worth. Use them for the "the thesis looks good, but is now the moment?" question. Each tile below explains what it's saying.
Why it matters: Short-term contrarian indicator. Extreme readings often precede mean reversion, though not always.
Reference: 30–70 normal · >70 overbought · <30 oversold
Full explanation → (14)35.9NeutralMomentum is balanced — neither overbought nor oversold.
Why it matters: When the fast line crosses above the slow line, short-term momentum is turning up; below, turning down. A timing cue, not a value signal.
Reference: Line above signal = bullish momentum · below = bearish
Full explanation →BearishLine below signalThe fast trend is below the slow trend — short-term momentum is currently downward.
Technicals describe price, not the business. A great company can have a "bearish" tape (a buying chance) and a weak one a "bullish" tape (a trap). Pair these with the valuation and health sections above.
QUALITY
Data Quality & Risk Flags (8 notes — click to expand/collapse)
Guardrail Notes (8)
- Cyclical sector: using normalized cash flow (median OCF minus estimated maintenance capex).
- Median OCF is negative — OCF-based normalization not applicable.
- Normalized OCF-capex was negative. Falling back to median raw FCF.
- No positive normalized FCF. Using EPS as proxy.
- Model implies no positive equity value under these assumptions. Valuation is speculative/low-confidence.
- Illiquidity discount 7% applied (small/micro-cap — harder to exit, demand a margin).
- Cyclical commodity producer: price is far above our modelled value. FCF-DCF structurally understates capital-intensive miners/energy — use the EV/Sales peer lens and the commodity-price outlook, not this single number.
- Extreme valuation gap (P/IV withheld — see the note above): result may be dominated by model assumptions, share count issues, or sector-specific dynamics. Treat as low confidence.
FINANCIALS
Financial Statements (5-year tables — click to expand)
From Contango Silver & Gold Inc.'s SEC filings (EDGAR).
Income (5yr)
| Year | Revenue | Net Income | EPS |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | — | -36.1M | $-2.80 |
| 2024 | — | -38.0M | $-3.49 |
| 2023 | — | -59.1M | $-7.14 |
| 2022 | — | -23.5M | $-3.49 |
| 2021 | — | — | $0.00 |
Cash Flow (5yr)
Capital expenditure isn't tagged in this filer's machine-readable data (the CapEx column shows "—"). The free-cash-flow column is therefore operating cash flow less stock-based compensation only — an upper bound on true owner earnings, not the real figure. Companies that report capex under a custom label (some large IFRS filers do) look better here than they are.
| Year | Operating CF | CapEx | − SBC | Free Cash Flow |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 25.7M | — | 3.4M | 22.4M |
| 2024 | 698,987 | 32.1M | 2.6M | -34.1M |
| 2023 | -13.6M | 46.2M | 3.0M | -62.7M |
| 2022 | -13.9M | 43,989 | 4.0M | -18.0M |
| 2021 | — | 36,531 | — | -36,531 |
How we define FCF: operating cash flow − capital expenditure − stock-based compensation (owner-earnings basis — SBC is a real cost to shareholders even though it's non-cash). Latest year: 25.7M − — − 3.4M (stock-based comp) = 22.4M. This is the same owner-earnings FCF definition the valuation model uses, though the DCF's starting value is a mid-cycle estimate (median operating cash flow less estimated maintenance capex and stock compensation — by design NOT the table's FCF, which deducts every year's full capex), not this single year.
Balance Sheet
| Total Assets | 172.0M |
| Total Liabilities | 146.9M |
| Equity | 25.1M |
| Total Debt | 33.9M |
Similar companies worth a look
Same sector and industry, similar fundamentals shape. Verify everything yourself — this list is computed mechanically and does not reflect our judgment about whether any of these are a good investment.
The questions people ask about CTGO
Is Contango Silver & Gold Inc. (CTGO) a good stock to buy?
We do not publish a single fair value for Contango Silver & Gold Inc., because one number would not be reliable for this business (the page explains why). Judge it on what today's price assumes, its financial-health checks and what insiders are doing, all shown here from SEC filings. This is educational research from SEC filings, not investment advice.
Is Contango Silver & Gold Inc. (CTGO) overvalued?
A single fair-value number is not reliable for Contango Silver & Gold Inc., so we do not call it overvalued or undervalued. The page shows what growth today's price assumes and how the company's finances look instead. This is educational research from SEC filings, not investment advice.
Where do these numbers come from?
From Contango Silver & Gold Inc.'s own SEC filings (10-K and 10-Q), Form 4 insider filings and daily market prices. Every figure on the page links to how it was calculated, and the model's weak spots are listed next to its results.