$0.00
$17.59
bear $0.00
base $7.78
bull $17.59
margin of safety $4.00
market price* $19.21
Business condition attached to the margin of safety
The U.S. Export-Import Bank loan of about $2.7 billion has been finally approved and closed, and the court challenges to the Stibnite permits have been resolved without the Forest Service approval being vacated.
Perpetua Resources is a development-stage company with one asset: the Stibnite Gold Project in central Idaho, which it owns 100%. It has no revenue and has never generated positive cash flow (2025 net loss about $100 million; operating cash outflow about $105 million). There are therefore no historical earnings to anchor a valuation, and every dollar of value here rests on a mine that has not yet been built. We value it on the company's own published mine plan (the March 2026 technical report in its 10-K), re-priced with metal prices we can defend from history, discounted at 6% a year. What the mine plan says: 45 months of construction, initial capital of about $2,576 million, then a 14.25-year mine life producing about 338,000 ounces of gold and 10.4 million pounds of antimony a year on average, with all-in sustaining cost of about $833 per gold ounce. Permits are in hand and early construction began in the fall of 2025. In March 2026 the U.S. Export-Import Bank board started the final step (a 25-day notice to Congress) toward a vote on an approximately $2.7 billion senior secured loan. That is not a commitment. At June 30, 2026 the company held about $574 million of cash and about 125 million diluted shares. Why we do not use the company's own price deck: the study assumes $3,250 per ounce gold. We cannot point to evidence that gold will hold that level, so we price the cases from what the filing shows gold has actually done: annual averages of $1,799 (2021), $1,801 (2022), $1,943 (2023), $2,387 (2024) and $3,435 (2025). Antimony ($10/lb) and silver ($40/oz) are kept at the study's values, and are about 6% of study revenue. Costs, grades and mine schedule are the company's; we did not credit any resource beyond the reserves in the plan, any expansion, or any life beyond the plan, because none is evidenced. After the mine plan ends, we assume nothing continues. We did not add the cash balance or deduct debt, since cash is being spent on construction and the loan is not yet in place; leverage is reflected in the downside case. Base case, about $7.78 per share: financing closes in late 2026, construction runs through 2030 as planned, first production in 2031, gold at $2,300 (roughly the five-year average of $2,273), taxes at the study's effective rate. This is the median outcome we can build from the evidence: the project is worth roughly $970 million today, all of it dependent on the loan closing and the mine being built to plan. Bull case, about $17.59 per share: same schedule and cost, gold at $2,900 (the average of 2024 and 2025). The mine plan, not a price forecast, supplies the volume. At the study's $3,250 gold the same model gives about $23 per share, which shows how sensitive the value is to the gold price. Bear case, $0 per share: the two lawsuits challenging the Forest Service approval (filed by environmental groups and, on August 29, 2025, by the Nez Perce Tribe, with rulings on pending motions still awaited) or the loan process delay construction by a year; costs run 20% over the study, which reflects an estimate that excludes escalation and is still being refined; and gold sits near its 2021-2022 level of $1,800. On those terms our model gives roughly negative $3.70 per share, meaning the mine would cost more to build than it earns. We show $0 because shareholders are not obliged to fund a losing build, but the company would owe more than the mine is worth on this path, and equity holders would lose most or all of what they have invested. If the approval were vacated, the outcome would be similar. What could make this wrong: financing on worse terms or heavy share issuance (which would dilute per-share value); capital cost growth beyond 20%; lower grades or recoveries than the study; or gold staying far above our base price, in which case value would be much higher. We did not credit the portion of initial capital already spent, so base and bull are modestly conservative on that point. The company reports it has enough cash for at least the next 12 months of early works, and can slow spending if financing is delayed. This is a single-project, pre-revenue business with a binary financing and permitting path, so the margin-of-safety price sits at a large discount to the base case and applies only after the loan closes and the permit challenges are resolved.