TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – The share price of Johannesburg- and Toronto-listed Witwatersrand Consolidated Gold Resources (Wits Gold) has faced a dramatic decline over the last five years, despite sustained share buying by members of senior management.

The company on Monday announced the latest in a string of transactions by company chairperson Adam Fleming and CEO Philip Kotze. Flemming had bought R37 040 of the company’s shares and Kotze had bought R3 381 worth of the company’s stock.

On Thursday last week, the company said Fleming bought R68 675 of stock and Kotze bought R70 291 worth of company stock.

However, on Friday, the company’s secondary Toronto-listed shares fell to its lowest level since the listing started early in 2008, shedding a fifth of its value to close at C$1.11 apiece.

The decline of the company’s share price had been significant, having free-fallen by 93% since initiating the listing at a price of C$18.50 apiece.

In Johannesburg, the company had also sustained an unrelenting decline in value over the last five years, before which the company’s stock traded at R110 apiece. This had, however, been eroded by more than 90% to close at R9.80 a share on Monday on the JSE.

South African gold shares had been struggling over the last year, despite the fact that the rand gold price had weakened only marginally.

Wits Gold last month said it intended to undertake a capital raising in the second half of the year, to repay a R40-million loan it had secured from related party The Joburg Trust, which is due on December 31, 2014.

The company said it would also use the cash to fund its day-to-day operational expenditures and to fast-track the development of its De Bron-Merriespruit project (DBM project). It added that should the company fail to raise the required funding, management would make the appropriate adjustments to the company's planned future expenditures until such time as further funding is obtained.

“These adjustments will ensure that the company can continue as a going concern for at least 12 months,” the company said last week.

Ongoing exploration of the company's prospecting rights was also dependent on the company's ability to obtain additional financing through the joint venturing of projects, debt financing, equity financing or other means.

The company had been granted 14 prospecting rights by the Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) under the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act of 2002. Two of these rights had been fully impaired and were in the process of being handed back to the State.

Two renewal applications for prospecting rights were submitted to the DMR during 2011, and a further renewal application was submitted to the DMR in November 2012. All three applications were still being processed.

The company had also submitted a mining right application to the DMR Free State region to incorporate the prospecting rights for the combined DBM project, as well as those for the Bloemhoek and Hakkies project areas. Wits Gold’s DBM project was estimated to cost R2.37-million.

The company in March told BDLive it was interested in buying the Navachab gold mine, in Namibia, owned by AngloGold Ashanti, as well as the Burnstone gold mine, which is owned by Great Basin Gold, and which is currently undergoing business rescue proceedings.

Wits Gold in March reported cash and cash equivalents fell to R15-million as at December 31, compared with R111.6-million at the end of the previous financial year. The company had also narrowed its R18-million loss for the 2012 financial year from a loss of R24.6-million in 2011.

Wits Gold has a current market capitalisation of R398-million, or C$44.49-million. Its shares on Monday traded at C$1.29 apiece on the TSX.