IronRidge Resources Limited (LON:IRR) has announced a fully underwritten call for the exercise of warrants which will raise £3,793,019 in new capital, before costs, to assist the company's ongoing project exploration and development efforts within Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire and Chad.
The African-focused minerals exploration group said under approval granted by shareholders at the company's General Meeting of June 25, 2020, it has remaining in issue 31,608,492 warrants issued to participants in the company's capital raising announced on May 11, 2020. Each warrant is exercisable at a price of 12p into one Depositary Interest shares of no par value in the company.
The company noted that it has the ability to call on the holders to exercise their warrants in the event that the company's ordinary shares trade at a Volume Weighted Average Price at or above 16p per share for a period of five consecutive business days, which was achieved on August 12, 2020.
READ: IronRidge says scoping study at Ewoyaa lithium project demonstrates earnings of over US$100mln per year
The group said the exercise of warrants is fully underwritten by Open Source Capital Limited (50%), Alberona Pty Ltd - a company controlled by Vincent Mascolo, the chief executive officer of IronRidge - and Neil Herbert, to the extent any of the warrants are not exercised, the ordinary shares that would have been issued to the holder will, instead, be issued to Open Source Capital Limited, Alberona Pty Ltd and Neil Herbert, in the proportion of 50%, 25% and 25% respectively, at a price of 12p per ordinary share.
An underwriter's fee will be payable to each of the three underwriters at the rate of 6% of the value of the ordinary shares subject of the warrant exercise process, with no fees attributable to warrants held by entities associated with Vincent Mascolo and Neil Herbert, or Assore Limited.
Ironridge said drilling has commenced in Ghana where a 12,500m resource and exploration reverse circulation (RC) programme designed to grow the Ewoyaa resource and enhance the exploration pipeline is underway.
It noted that the recently announced Ewoyaa Scoping Study has demonstrated life of mine revenues exceeding US$1.55bn, Post-tax NPV8 of US$345mln and an Internal Rate of Return of 125% over 8 years. It is estimated that every additional year of production will add around US$40mln in NPV per annum, further reinforcing the drill programme currently underway.
In Côte d'Ivoire, the Zaranou air-core (AC) and RC drilling programme currently underway has delivered multiple high-grade gold intersections including 28 metres (m) at 4.07 grams per ton (g/t) from 124m in hole ZARC0100, 8m at 14.01g/t from 4m in hole ZAAC0763, 16m at 6.68g/t from 100m in hole ZARC0102 and 64m at 1.41g/t from 100m in hole ZARC0104, with the programme estimated to be completed by end January 2021.
Concurrently an extensive auger programme is underway over the Vavoua portfolio testing high-priority geophysical targets along strike from the 3mln ounce (Moz) Abujar deposit and a 2,500m RC programme planned to test trenching targets at the Kineta portfolio. Exploration planning is underway to follow-up AC drill intersections at the Bianouan and Bodite portfolios.
In Chad, the Company is currently preparing for a 7,000m RC programme to test high-priority targets including the Dorothe intrusion-related gold target where trenching has returned multiple high-grade gold intersections including 84m at 1.66g/t, 4m at 18.77g/t, 32m at 2.02g/t, 24m at 2.53g/t, 4m at 14.12g/t, 2m at 34.1g/t and 1m at 63.2g/t over a 3 kilometres (km) long by 1km area.