PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Uranium developer Lotus Resources has completed a A$25-million share placement to sophisticated, professional and institutional investors to progress the development of the Kayelekera project, in Malawi.
The company will issue 104.2-million new fully paid ordinary shares, at a price of 24c a share.
The offer price represented a 9.1% discount to Lotus’ volume weighted average price at the end of August, and a 2.6% discount to the company’s ten-day volume weigthed average price for the same period.
The new shares will be placed under the company’s existing placement capacity.
“We are very pleased to have received such strong support for the placement which will enable us to progress offtake negotiations with the various utilities and project funding during a period of significant support for nuclear energy globally,” said Lotus MD Keith Bowes.
“In particular, the demand received from global sector specialists during the bookbuild provides significant validation for the company’s restart strategy and underscores the value of the project as one of the nearest term producers globally.”
A recently completed definitive feasibility study (DFS) into the restart into the Kayelekera uranium project found that the project would require a capital investment of $88-million with cash costs estimated at $29.1/lb and an all-in sustaining cost of $36.2/lb during the first seven years of production of a ten-year mine life.
Based on an ore reserve estimate of 15.9-million tonnes, at 660 parts per million uranium oxide (U3O8), for 23-million pounds of U3O8, the DFS estimated that the project would produce an average of 2.4-million pounds U3O8 over the mine life.