VANCOUVER (miningweekly.com) – Canadian midtier gold producer B2Gold announced on Friday that it would distribute an at-the-market offering of $100-million worth of common shares from time to time through designated broker-dealers at prevailing market prices.
The news resulted in the fast-growing Vancouver-based miner’s TSX-listed stock rising by as much as 2.43% on Friday morning.
The Vancouver-based company had entered into equity distribution agreements with US- and Canada-based subsidiaries of Canaccord Genuity and HSBC Securities, through which it will sell newly issued shares into the secondary trading market.
B2Gold, which has four operating mines in Namibia, Philippines and Nicaragua, said it would use the proceeds of the offering to fund accelerated exploration at the Fekola project, in Mali, and exploration and feasibility work at the Kiaka project, in Burkina Faso, as well as for ongoing general corporate expenditures and discretionary capital programmes.
A prefeasibility study completed on the Fekola project has confirmed a large-scale, low-cost and robust project.
The project hosts a mineral resource of 54.97-million tonnes, grading 2.38 g/t gold.
The project is planned as an openpit mine and a conventional carbon-in-leach processing circuit to process four-million tonnes a year during steady-state production.
It will produce an average of 350 000 oz/y for the first seven years of production at an average operating cash cost of $418/oz. The life-of-mine plan is to produce about 276 000 oz/y at an average operating cash cost of $552/oz.
Created in 2007, B2Gold had relatively quickly grown to a market capitalisation of C$4.22-billion, expecting 2016 to be another record year for gold production in the range of 510 000 oz to 550 000 oz.