A 62-kilogram sample of native gold found at the Beta Hunt Mine in Australia. Source: RNC Minerals Corp.
RNC Minerals Corp. [RNX-TSX], aka Royal Nickel Corp., said Monday December 17 that it is raising $9 million to fund exploration and development at its Beta Hunt gold mine in Australia and for general corporate purposes.
The company said a syndicate of underwriters have agreed to purchase 13.04 million shares of the company y at 46 cents per share on a bought deal basis, generating an initial $6 million.
Concurrent with the offering, the underwriters have also agreed to purchase on a bought deal private placement basis 6.52 million common shares of the company at 46 cents a share for additional proceeds of $2.99 million. The private placement will be sold to Eric Sprott or his designee.
The company has agreed to grant the underwriters an overallotment option to increase the size of the offering and private placement by up to an additional 15%, a move that could increase the gross proceeds to $10.3 million.
RNX shares moved lower on the news, falling 3.85% or $0.02 to 50 cents on volume of 3.4 million. The 52-week range is $0.07 and $1.18.
Following a significant high-grade discovery, gold production at the Beta Hunt gold mine in Australia reached record levels in the third quarter of 2018.
The company said production of 31,360 mine gold ounces in the quarter marked a 199% increase compared to the third quarter of 2017. That brought production for the first nine months of 2018 to 58,460 ounces, a big increase from the comparable period last year.
RNC recently attracted international attention following news of a once-in-a lifetime gold strike in the Father’s Day Vein at Beta Hunt. The company said it had extracted 9,250 ounces of gold, worth $15 million, from a 130-tonne cut of rock about 500 metres underground at the mine.
The find included a single 95-kilogram chunk that contained 2,400 ounces of gold, worth about $3.8 million. A second 62-kilogram stone contained 1,620 ounces.
RNC shares rose sharply on September 24, 2018 after the company said a new exploration drive on 14 Level had recovered more visible coarse gold.
RNC recently announced the final gold content estimates for the large specimen stones, which would rank them among the largest ever found. “The King Henry specimen stone, at 1,402 ounces, would rank amongst the largest gold specimens in existence,” said RNC President and CEO Mark Selby.
“With multiple large scale and spectacular specimens coming from a single area, we believe the Father’s Day Vein may rank among the richest and most prolific gold veins ever found,” he said.
RNC said it now expects 27,000 to 30,000 ounces of gold from the immediate Father’s Day Vein area, and substantially more than 35,000 ounces from the 540 metres of A Zone sediment structures identified to date.
RNC holds a 100% interest in the Beta Hunt Mine. It also holds a 28% interest in a nickel joint venture that owns the Dumont Nickel-Cobalt Project in the Abitibi region of Quebec. In addition, RNC owns a 35% interest in Orford Mining Corp. [ORM-TSXV], a mineral explorer focused on highly prospective and underexplored areas of northern Quebec, and the U.S. Carolina Gold Belt.