Welcome back, everyone. We have an update from Vista Gold Corp. It trades on the New York Stock Exchange American under the symbol VGZ and on the TSX under the symbol VGZ, holds the Mt Todd Gold Project and advanced development stage gold deposit located in the low-risk, Tier 1 mining-friendly jurisdiction of Northern Territory, Australia. Please welcome CEO Fred Earnest. Welcome, Fred. We're excited for your update today.
Thank you. It's good to be back. It's an exciting time. I know that there's a lot of things going on in the gold space. I will be making some forward-looking statements, but just to move along quickly for those who may be new to the story, in July of this year, we announced the results of a new feasibility study that demonstrates a very achievable path to near-term production at our Mt Todd Gold Project. As indicated, it's located in the Northern Territory of Australia in what the Australians call the Top End. It's only about 250 kilometers from Darwin and about 30 minutes from a regional community commerce center called Katherine. This is Australia's second-largest undeveloped gold project. It's the largest undeveloped gold project not held by a producer, and we're excited to be the owners of that project.
The feasibility study that we completed is at a scale of 15,000 tons per day. It incorporates the Australian principles of fit-for-purpose design. While it's initially staged or designed at 15,000 tons a day, we've preserved the opportunity for and the option for expansion. We're going to talk a little bit more about this, but we've prioritized grade over tons, and another objective was to significantly reduce the initial CapEx. I'm happy to report that the project economics are very strong and that they support a near-term production decision. Digressing for a moment, as indicated, we trade on the NYSE American and the TSX under the symbol VGZ. We have 125 million shares issued and outstanding, AUD 13.2 million in cash, and we have very strong leverage to the gold price. You see some of our largest shareholders off on the right.
I'm going to leave that for those of you on the call to read and digest or come back to. What I really want to get into is the study itself and the results of it. This study, whether you want to call it turning a new page or a paradigm shift, we've charted a new path for value realization. Since announcing the results of the feasibility study, I think we've already seen the first steps in that value realization. We went from our last feasibility study that evaluated a 50,000-ton per day operation and had a billion-dollar CapEx with about 395,000 oz of gold produced on an annual basis over the life of the project to a project that's less than 1/3 of the size. We've achieved a 59% reduction in initial CapEx. We'll talk a little bit about those results here in just a moment.
As I indicated, we've prioritized grade. The average grade of the deposit has come up from 0.77 g per ton to 0.97 g per ton. We've adopted what is in Australia a very common practice of having contract mining, and there's a very competitive industry centered around contract mining in Australia. We continue to have third-party power generation. We've been able to stabilize the gold production profile over the life of the project. Previously, we had very high production in the early years, middle years very low production, and then high at the end. I'm happy to say that now the production schedule is such that we have 175,000 oz of gold expected in the first three years and then 150,000 oz of gold per year constantly over the next 15 years. We've adopted another Australian practice of having a fly-in, fly-out workforce. This comes with some cost.
It includes camp as part of the initial CapEx, but it's a way of minimizing the employment and the staffing risk, and it's a very common practice, and that's another significant change. Now, the results themselves. As indicated, we've prioritized grade. The average grade ordered at the plant over the first half of the life of a 30-year project, in other words, the first 15 years, is 1.04 g per ton. That's a significant improvement from where we're at. We already talked about average annual gold production, and the initial CapEx is now estimated to be AUD 425 million. That's a huge drop from the AUD 1+ billion that we saw previously. Our reserve has dropped from 7 million oz to 5.2 million oz. That's part of a change that's resulted from raising the cutoff grade. We had a 0.35 g per ton cutoff grade previously. It's now 0.5 g per ton.
It allows us to get better grade material to the plant, and I'm still very happy that we have a + 5 million oz reserve. It's still a very respectable project. The economics of the project were evaluated at a AUD 2,500 gold price, way lower than where we're at today. At that gold price, we had an after-tax NPV-5 of AUD 1.1 billion and a nearly 28% IRR. At the time that we published the results, our gold price result was just a little over AUD 3,300. Looking at the project at AUD 3,700, we have a AUD 2.7 billion NPV-5 and over 50% IRR. This is still a very, very phenomenal, very solid, and strong project. The all-in sustaining costs are just under AUD 1,500 a mine and for the first 15 years, just under AUD 1,450. Cutting right to the chase, what's the value proposition?
When we compare the Mt Todd Gold Project and Vista Gold Corp to the Australian junior gold producers, we see that we have a larger reserve. We have more production capability on an annual basis than any of them, yet our valuation is significantly less. At a very minimum, we would expect to see our market cap, our valuation, come up something on the order of catalyst at close to AUD 1 billion. Aspirationally, we think that we could achieve something closer to Capricorn, which would be another 2x or 3x that. There is a tremendous opportunity here as we move the project from this new feasibility study toward a development decision and ultimately into production. Last of all, and this will be the last slide I share, just to recap, we designed this as an Australian project for near-term production.
We think that it's a very attractive development option, smaller scale, higher grade to the mill. We've reduced the CapEx significantly. We've stabilized the gold production profile. The economics that we've just talked about speak for themselves. We've preserved the opportunity to expand it. We don't expect that this project will run at 15,000 tons a day for 30 years, and we've reduced development and operating risk by switching consultants, using engineering firms with proven track records in developing mines in Australia. We changed to contract mining. We've switched to a predominantly fly-in, fly-out workforce. Lastly, I'm happy to say that the study has opened doors to various different development options. With that as kind of a recap, let's go ahead and take questions that those on the call may have today.
OK, perfect. Thank you for that. The results of your new feasibility study have been very well received by the market. On the day you announced the feasibility study results, Vista's share price was AUD 0.93 on October 8. It hit a high of AUD 2.46. Tell us more about the value proposition and why investors should be interested in Vista Gold at today's share price.
That's a great point that you brought out, those share prices. On July 29, the gold price was AUD 33.24. On October 8, when we hit the high price of AUD 2.46, the gold price was AUD 4,044, almost exactly what it is today. When we look at net asset value per share at a AUD 2,500 gold price, it's AUD 8.80. If we look at it at a AUD 3,300 gold price, the price it was when we announced the study, that's AUD 17.60. That's almost 10x more than where we're trading today. When you look at this project, and I know that people are panicked about the gold price, we still have a phenomenal gold project.
What I would just encourage people to look at is take a pause, take a deep breath, and look at the value of the project and realize that there's tremendous intrinsic value at Mt Todd, nearly 10 x what we're trading at today. There's tremendous value opportunity here as we move this project forward and we move it into production.
Thank you, Fred. We are out of time, but we do have lots of questions for you, so we'll send them to you. Great. Thank you for joining us and great news.
Thank you very much. It's good to be on the show again.
All right, everyone. We'll be right back. Welcome back. We have an update from Kobo Resources . Trades on the OTCQB under the symbol KBRIF and on the TSX under the symbol KRI and emerged with a clear mission to explore the untapped potential of one of the most prospective gold belts in the world, located in Australia, which currently hosts several multimillion-ounce gold deposits. Please welcome CEO Ed Gosselin . Welcome back to the conference, Ed. We're looking forward to your update today.
Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. Welcome, everyone, to this update. For starters, like the host mentioned, we're in Côte d'Ivoire, and that's where all our assets are. We're focused on finding near-surface minable ounces. Kobo is right now drilling one major prospect, which is the Kossou Project, and that's next door to an existing mine called the Yaouré Mine, operated by Perseus Mining of Australia. We happen to be in a great belt. We've got a strong team. The former drill manager of the Yaouré Mine is our drill manager. We brought on board some key partners in the name of Mota-Engil of Portugal last year. The number of drilled meters is inaccurate. As of today, we've probably drilled close to 30,000 m because we started the campaign, a new campaign, as early as September 4.
For you people who do not know much about Côte d'Ivoire, this was the situation 10 or 12 years ago when the mining code was revamped, and this is the state of affairs today. You can see the government made the right decisions in making a mining code that was favorable to attract foreign investments, and it has been a success for the country. This is the slide that gives you a snapshot of gold production in West Africa, generally speaking. They have been performing extremely well over the years. On this slide, you have our land package. To the left is the Kossou Project. In the red square, the blue box, a small blue box, is the Yaouré Mine. We're basically less than 10 km away from an existing mine, which has already depleted close to 1/2 of its resource to date.
Our job is to find as many minable ounces as possible on surface and become a takeout target. In the rest of the country, we have another license by the name of Kotobi. That's more grassroots. That's progressing as we speak. We have signed a couple of earn-in agreements earlier in the year with Nesd ave Mining Company, and we have another few applications pending, the Bukanda permit, which is next a bit to the northwest of the Katobi license, and the Yakassé Gold Project, which is also in the Adzopé region close to the earn-in with Nesd ave. In terms of changes since our presentation that we had on August 21 or 22, I believe, we've since completed a AUD 4 million raise. We're all cashed up for this current drilling program and the grassroots stuff that we're doing in the east of the country.
Like I mentioned before, we've done approximately a little more than 5,000 m of drilling since September 4. We've done a lot of drilling on the Jagger zone on this slide here. I know it's a road touch. This is the Jagger. We're advancing as fast as we can in order to produce our first MRE in Q1 of next year, around there. The Jagger zone that was heavily drilled to date has received at least or more than 50%- 55% of the drilling meters. We are also drilling the other core area, which is the road cut zone. That's where we had our initial discovery. We got two drills turning right now, 24/7, and we normally release results every three weeks, give or take. The lab has been fantastic in getting us results turned around within an average of five to seven days.
That's why we're able to put out news. I would assume that probably next week you should be seeing on the wire some updated results on the drilling campaign. This is an area where the Katy zone, that's a different beast that we're trying to understand, has not seen as much drilling as the other two zones, but we do intend to push the envelope on that one as well. Just to go back a little bit, I see that Paul has joined us. Paul is our COO and President, as well as our Chief Geologist. This area that you or this slide that you see is the or the next one I should show you, the geochem targets. If you look at the dotted line on the side of the road cut zone and the Jagger zone, that dotted line is what we call the contact fault.
We've been drilling there as well, and we think that that's an area that should produce some good minable ounces for us in the very near future. We're excited about that and what's unraveling in that area. In terms of main catalysts, we have decided to add or increase our land package in country. As you can see, when I mentioned before the Yakassé project, that's a pending application. We hope to get that permit issued to us in Q1 of next year. On this asset, you can see that there were historical drilling results that we were able to get our hands on and some very interesting results, namely 21 m at 4.5 g per ton and 20 m at 1.6, 44 m at 2.32. We're excited about that asset. That discovery or these drill results that are there are on a strike extent of approximately three kilometers.
As soon as that permit is issued to us, we will get to work on that one. We should also be getting some work done on the Nesd ave mining project at the bottom that you can see. We also own another subsidiary called [Cariboo]. We're strategically picking up assets in an area where we believe that it has high potential for results in terms of exploration and drilling. In terms of the cap structure, following the raise that we did in September, we now have 118 million shares issued approximately. Management has a high stake in it, 35%, as you can see. A couple of institutions in there and the public vote at 40%. Our strategic partner in the name of Luso Global Mining, who happens to be a subsidiary of Mota-Engil.
Mota-Engil is a large EPC company based in Portugal, 50,000 employees in 30 countries, is a mine contractor in 10 mines in Africa, has had a presence there for nearly 80 years. A very solid partner to have on board for us should we be making a decision to build one day on a discovery. I can let Paul talk a bit to the geology per se, and then near the end of the presentation, we can have a couple of minutes where we will take some of your questions. Paul, do you have anything that you would like to add to the audience on the geology so far in our drilling campaign?
Yeah, thanks, Ed. Sorry for joining late. I had a bit of a computer glitch. This is a typical orogenic gold-style deposit that you will find in West Africa gold terrains. As Ed mentioned, that contact zone fault, we think that's an important feature. It separates a significant package of volcanics, which is where most of our mineralization lies, within the sedimentary units to the northeast. We think that's the structure that is providing the fluid flow access from deep down in the Earth's crust to bring all this mineralization to surface. We're looking at that as a target as we move forward as well. In terms of each deposit or each showing that we're drilling off at the moment at the Jagger zone, what you've got is a series of north-south trending shear zones. Within that, it's very broad, anywhere from 40 - 60, 80 meters wide in places.
Within that major shear system itself, we're getting a number of these, what we call V2 veins, which are these northwest or north-northwest to west-northwest trending quartz veins that bring in some significant high-grade values into our results. You can see here on the slide that's been brought up, this is the Jagger zone. We've established the core of that zone over about 650, 700 m strike length. We've drilled that target down to approximately 100, and actually, now we've drilled it down to about 200 m below surface. The shear zones are still open at depth. If you look at the left-hand side of the slide there, you'll see some of our better results that we've pulled off of this target. You can see these broad zones, 48 m of a g, 20 m at 1.87 g per ton, all good grades.
I think what's important is you can see some zones in there where you're getting 2 m at 18 g per ton, 3 m at 11 g, almost 12 g per ton. That's the impact of these high-grade quartz veins. What we're trying to do now with the diamond drilling programs and our modeling is really sort out the distribution of those V2 veins, because they're clearly an important structure in terms of the gold endowment for this shear system. When you move north, this is the road cut zone. No, go back. Yeah, road cut zone. I can do it here. Here we go. There's the road cut zone. Again, very, very similar situation. We've got over a kilometer of strike length on this shear system that we've identified here. Importantly, there's an area down on the east side of that, about halfway down the page you're looking at.
We call it the artisanal mining zone. In the recent dramsrilling that we're getting in there, we've released some results from that in our latest press release, and there'll be more coming out over the coming weeks, as Ed mentioned. A really interesting zone, very highly solidified zone of mineralization there. We're getting some really good cuts on that as well. You can see a similar situation. You're getting broad widths at moderate grades, so 12 m at 1.48 g, 13 m at 2 g. You'll see these high-grade hits, like a meter at 20 g, etc. Those are the influence of those cross-cutting quartz veins that we're finding in our drilling to date. These are all very, very positive results for us. As Ed mentioned, that contact zone, we've had some holes into that recently, and we're getting some pretty interesting looking rock out of that as well.
We'll have some results out on some of that coming up here in the next couple of weeks in terms of press releases. I think that's a target that we're going to be very keenly looking at and seeing how we can develop that and see how many ounces we might be able to put together on that particular target as well. The other thing to mention here is that between the Jagger zone, the northern end of the Jagger zone, and the southern part of the road cut zone, there's about a 400-meter gap in there. Based on our trenching work and more recent drilling, we now think that those two zones are likely connected through the same structural event. What we're doing is we're putting a series of holes into those as we speak, trying to see if we can connect these two zones together.
If we can do that, that gives us over 2.5 kilometers of strike extent on this overall shear system where we're trying to target what we think are the hot spots within that system to see if we can build some ounces. It's a nice target. We're still drilling it. We will be coming out, we believe, with a mineral resource estimate in Q1 of next year. There'll be lots of news flow over the next few months, and hopefully, we'll have some good numbers out for you guys in the new year. You can see how many ounces we've been able to build on the project.
Wonderful.
I guess last.
Sorry, Paul. We do have to move on to our next presenter in about two minutes. This was a really great, thorough update, and we appreciate you hopping on. Ed, Paul, please join us again in the future. Thank you for this update today.
Thank you, everyone.