West Africa focused Stellar Diamonds (LON:STEL) has raised around £1.1 million to advance its Droujba and Tongo projects, it said.
The cash was raised via a placing and subscription of around 41.9 million shares with institutional and other investors at 2.65p each, representing around a 6% premium to last night's closing price of 2.50p.
Chief executive Karl Smithson told investors: "We are very pleased with the level of shareholder support from existing and new institutional and private client investors.
"The placing funds will be applied to the development of our key kimberlite projects of Droujba in Guinea and Tongo in Sierra Leone.
"Having established at the end of last year a combined inferred resource of 4 million carats, the next phase is to commission independent conceptual economic scoping studies on both projects to establish their preliminary economics before deciding whether to move into the pre-feasibility stage later this year."
The directors and management of the firm took part in the cash call - to the tune of around £0.2mln, Stellar revealed.
Breaking down the numbers, it said around £0.6mln of the net funds will be used on the scoping studies, together with on-going operational expenditure at the two sites.
The studies are expected to take six months to complete and around £0.45mln will be used to fund the company's on-going working capital during this time.
Further funding will then be required to meet the cost of any pre-feasibility studies and on-going working capital requirements, Stellar said.