VISTA GOLD CORP (VGZ) Stock Analysis
VISTA GOLD CORP
▾ What's in the 46/100 risk score? (higher = riskier)
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.
How to read VGZ (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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EV/Sales peer comparison ↓
How the price compares to similar producers is more meaningful than a through-cycle DCF.
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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 VGZ 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.
How does VGZ stack up against its closest peers?
We take the 8 same-industry companies most similar to VGZ (similar size) and check what investors are paying for each dollar of their revenue (or profits). If VGZ 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.
| EV / Gross ProfitEV / Gross Profit — Enterprise value divided by gross profit — the multiple paid for what each dollar of sales contributes after direct costs. Why it matters: More refined than EV/Sales for high-margin businesses (software, marketplaces) where gross margin is the real economic engine. Reference: 8–15x for SaaS · 15–25x for hypergrowth software · >30x demanding Full explanation → |
8.4x / 9.7x / 31.0x |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GLDG | GoldMining Inc. | Gold & Silver Mining | $250M | — | — | — | — |
| SBMT | SILVER BOW MINING CORP. | Gold & Silver Mining | $295M | — | — | — | — |
| VOXR | VOX ROYALTY CORP. | Gold & Silver Mining | $312M | 25.9x | 31.0x | — | 1.2% |
| TRX | TRX GOLD Corp | Gold & Silver Mining | $232M | 4.0x | 9.7x | — | 2.6% |
| GORO | GOLD RESOURCE CORP | Gold & Silver Mining | $225M | 2.3x | 8.4x | — | 3.0% |
| TII | Titan Mining Corp | Gold & Silver Mining | $214M | — | — | — | — |
| PLG | PLATINUM GROUP METALS LTD | Gold & Silver Mining | $197M | — | — | — | — |
| CMCL | Caledonia Mining Corp Plc | Gold & Silver Mining | $446M | — | — | — | — |
Quality & solvency checks
Cheap stocks can be cheap for a reason. These screens warn when a low valuation comes paired with structural fragility.
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 -$7.5M 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 -$6.6M (was -$5.7M the prior year).Why this matters: Profit can be an accounting figure; cash from running the business is harder to fake. Negative operating cash flow means the core business consumes cash and must be funded externally.
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✓ Cash flow backs up reported profitOperating cash flow -$6.6M vs net income -$7.5M.
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✗ Return on assets improvingReturn on assets -46.1% vs 59.3% a year ago.Why this matters: Is the company squeezing more profit out of each dollar of assets than last year? Rising = getting more efficient; falling = the opposite.
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✓ Debt load (vs assets)The filing reports no interest-bearing debt in either year (total assets $16.3M).
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✗ Short-term liquidity (current ratio)Current ratio 12.97x vs 16.73x a year ago.Why this matters: The current ratio compares assets it can turn to cash within a year against bills due within a year. Below 1.0 means it may struggle to cover near-term obligations.
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✓ Share count (dilution)Share count held roughly flat (125.6M → 125.2M year-over-year).
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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.
Plain English: the company holds about $14M in cash and is burning roughly $7M/year in operations. At that pace, the cash lasts 2.1 yrs before it must raise capital (diluting shareholders), take on debt, or cut spending.
Assumes constant burn and ignores financing/asset sales. For pre-profit biotech and growth companies, this matters more than a DCF — a great drug pipeline is worthless if they run out of money before approval.
The market appears to be paying up for significant future growth potential, as evidenced by the implied growth rate of 63.9% compared to the model's 5.0%. The biggest risk to our model's base assumptions is that the company's operating cash flow, which has been negative in the latest period and 0/5 years, continues to decline from its current level, making the modeled normalized cash flow too high.
As of 42 days ago
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.
- Updates on Mt Todd project permitting and financing
- Feasibility study results and project economics
- Trends in gold prices and their impact on project viability
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 is negative at -$7.9M — the cash burn widened vs last year.
- Swung to a loss of -$7.5M (from a profit the prior year).
Nothing was clearly improving year-over-year.
Management & Leadership
Frederick H. Earnest serves as the President and CEO of Vista Gold Corp, a role he has held for over a decade. He has been instrumental in guiding the company's strategic direction, particularly concerning its primary asset, the Mt Todd gold project.
What They Make
Vista Gold Corp is a gold exploration and development company primarily focused on advancing its Mt Todd gold project in Australia. The company's paying counterparties are investors who fund its exploration and development activities.
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.
The market prices VGZ at a premium of +1878.6%, implying a substantial 63.9% annual per-share cash-flow growth, which is significantly higher than the model's 5.0%. This suggests the market may be assigning value to the future development and potential production from its Mt Todd project, which is not in the model. This optimism persists despite the company's negative net income and operating cash flow in the latest period, indicating investors are looking past current financial performance.
Business Model & Valuation
How They Make Money
The company does not pay dividends or engage in buybacks, primarily funding its operations and development through equity raises and other financing activities.
Normalized FCF
Cyclical/commodity sector (Gold & Silver Mining) with negative current FCF: normalized FCF uses multi-year median to smooth through the cycle.
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 FCF 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
The company has a track record of negative net income and operating cash flow in recent periods.
Geography & Markets
Vista Gold Corp is primarily focused on its Mt Todd gold project located in Northern Territory, Australia. While the company is headquartered in the US, its operational focus is international.
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)53.4NeutralMomentum 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 →BullishLine above signalThe fast trend is above the slow trend — short-term momentum is currently upward.
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 15% 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 VISTA GOLD CORP's SEC filings (EDGAR).
Income (5yr)
| Year | Revenue | Net Income | EPS |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | — | -7.5M | $-0.06 |
| 2024 | — | 11.2M | $0.09 |
| 2023 | — | -6.6M | $-0.05 |
| 2022 | — | -4.9M | $-0.04 |
| 2021 | — | -15.2M | $-0.14 |
Cash Flow (5yr)
| Year | Operating CF | CapEx | − SBC | Free Cash Flow |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | -6.6M | 592,000 | 671,000 | -7.9M |
| 2024 | -5.7M | 344,000 | 684,000 | -6.8M |
| 2023 | -5.9M | 51,000 | 636,000 | -6.5M |
| 2022 | -7.4M | 5,000 | 779,000 | -8.2M |
| 2021 | -10.6M | 139,000 | 887,000 | -11.6M |
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: -6.6M − 592,000 − 671,000 (stock-based comp) = -7.9M. 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 | 16.3M |
| Total Liabilities | 1.2M |
| Equity | 15.1M |
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