Rise Gold Corp. (RYES) stock intrinsic value fair value estimate & owner earnings analysis

Rise Gold owns the Idaho-Maryland Gold Mine property near Grass Valley, California, a past-producing high-grade underground gold mine held through its subsidiary Rise Grass Valley. It has no revenue and has reported losses every year since inception. Its plan to reopen the mine has been blocked on two fronts. In December 2023 Nevada County's Board of Supervisors rejected the company's claim that it holds a vested right to mine without a permit, and on February 16, 2024 the Board denied the use permit and declined to certify the environmental impact report. On May 7, 2026 the Nevada County Superior Court upheld the vested-rights rejection, finding that any such right had been abandoned by no later than 1963; a second claim in the same case is still pending. The company has said it will appeal, and that if the appeal fails it intends to sue the county for taking its mineral rights, which it believes are worth at least $400 million. What the company owns today: at April 30, 2026 it held about $8.0 million of cash and Treasury bills, working capital of about $7.4 million and no debt, having repaid its loans in May 2025 and cancelled its credit facility in December 2025. It also holds a $1.25 million note, paying 5% interest and due May 27, 2027, from the buyer of 50 acres of surface land it sold in 2025, carried at about $1.21 million. It still owns 109 acres of surface land zoned light industrial, which the county assesses at about $2.8 million, plus mineral rights over about 2,560 acres. In 2024 and 2025 it sold 66 acres for about $4.1 million before closing deductions, roughly 1.3 times the county's $3.1 million assessment of those acres, and it holds an option to buy them back if it ever obtains approval to mine. How we valued it: the business produces no earnings. Counting stock-based pay as a real cost, it consumed a median of about $3.1 million a year over the five fiscal years to July 2025 and about $3.0 million in the nine months to April 2026. Spending dipped to $1.9 million in fiscal 2025, when the company was short of cash, but rose again after it raised $7 million in October 2025, so we do not treat the lower figure as the normal pace. Because the company does not hold a right to mine, and both the county and the court have so far said it does not, we give no value to a future mine or to the proposed takings lawsuit; either would require an outcome that has not happened. The shares are therefore worth what the company owns, less what it is likely to spend pursuing the mine, discounted at 6% a year. Base case, about 2 cents a share: spending continues at about $3.1 million a year for roughly three years while the appeal and the pending claim run their course, after which the remaining land is sold at the county's assessed value. That leaves about $2.7 million, or 2 cents on the 127.5 million shares outstanding. Bull case, about 7 cents a share: spending falls back to the fiscal 2025 level of about $1.9 million a year, the dispute ends within two years, and the remaining land sells at the same premium to assessment that the 2024 and 2025 sales achieved, about $3.7 million. That leaves about $8.4 million. Bear case, about minus 5 cents a share: the company loses on appeal and then pursues a federal takings suit, spending at the recent pace of about $4.0 million a year including stock pay for five years. That spending exceeds everything the company owns by about $6 million, which would have to be raised by selling new shares, diluting today's holders. The company has no debt; the negative figure reflects spending beyond its resources, not money owed. What would make this wrong: a win on appeal recognizing a right to mine, or a successful takings claim, would create value that none of these cases credits. A longer or costlier legal fight would lower it. On its balance sheet alone the company holds roughly 7 cents a share in cash, working capital and the note, and about 9 cents including the land at assessed value, but that cushion shrinks with every year of litigation. Given how much depends on management's spending and on court outcomes, the margin-of-safety price is about 1 cent a share.