White Gold to raise $14.5M for exploration

[Redator]

White Gold (TSXV: WGO) is set to raise C$20 million ($14.5 million) in a brokered private placement to fund its exploration activities in Canada’s Yukon Territory.

Clarus Securities, as lead agent of the offering, will issue a combination of premium flow-through units (C$1.17 per unit), flow-through common shares (C$1.00 per share) and units (C$0.85 per unit). Each premium unit comprises one flow-trough share and one-half of a common share purchase warrant, while the non-premium unit consists of one common share and one-half of a warrant. Each whole warrant is exercisable at C$1.15 for 24 months.

Agnico Eagle Mines (TSX, NYSE: AEM), as a 19.8% shareholder, has indicated to the company that it plans to participate in the offering to maintain its interest on a partially diluted basis.

Shares of White Gold hit a 52-week high of C$0.91 apiece on the announcement. At midday, it pulled back to C$0.89 for a market capitalization of C$175.9 million ($127.3 million).

Top 3 Yukon gold

The company currently owns a portfolio of 21 properties covering 3,051 km², or 40% of Yukon’s emerging White Gold district. Its namesake flagship project hosts four near-surface gold deposits. Collectively, they contain an estimated 1.73 million oz. of gold in indicated resources and 1.27 million oz. in inferred resources.

The resource estimate, which was updated last month, places White Gold among the top 3 gold projects in the Yukon in terms of contained metal, only behind Snowline Gold’s (TSXV: SGD; US-OTC: SNWGF) Valley resource and Victoria Gold’s Brewery Creek project.

According to White Gold, there is significant expansion potential on the resource itself and in the immediate surrounding area.

“We look forward to further increasing the scale of the project as we concurrently advance it to a PEA to demonstrate its economic potential,” White Gold CEO David D’Onofrio said in a statement.

“Our exploration activities will also continue to focus on unlocking additional value across our extensive land package targeting gold and critical mineral opportunities in the prolific and underexplored White Gold district.”

Regional exploration work has also produced several other new discoveries and prospective targets on the company’s claim packages, some of which border sizable gold and copper projects. These include the Coffee project that was just sold by Newmont (NYSE: NEM, TSX: NGT), with measured and indicated resources totalling 3 million oz. of gold, and Western Copper and Gold’s (TSX, NYSE-A: WRN) Casino project, which has measured and indicated gold resources of 14.8 million oz. and copper resources of 7.6 billion lb.