Friday, February 12, 2010 Kalahari Minerals' planned Coronet acquisition to complete in March as deal gets 97.61% acceptances company news image
Kalahari Minerals (AIM: KAH) announced that it has received 97.61% of the acceptances from Coronet Resources shareholders in favour of the conditional off-market takeover. Coronets principal asset is a 7.65% stake in Kalahari. The AIM listed company initially tabled the share-based bid in December, offering 1 Kalahari share for every 1.705 Coronet share held. Upon completion, Coronets holding could either be placed with new investors, or cancelled to boost the NAV (net asset value) per share.
At the time the bid was announced, on 17 December, the share-based offer valued Coronet at A$50.4 million, or A$1.85 per share. Having received acceptances greater than 90%, a key condition of the offer, Kalahari now expects the transaction to close on 3 March 2010, subject to certain other conditions. According to Kalahari, current Coronet shareholders will benefit from the access to Kalaharis liquidity as an AIM and Namibian Stock Exchange listed company.
Among the terms of the deal Coronet is required to dispose of its Western Australian mining tenements, resulting in Coronet not having any material assets other than the 16 million Kalahari shares. In todays statement Kalahari noted that Coronet has lodged surrenders of the tenements with Western Australias Department of Mines and Petroleum. Provided the surrenders were lodged in the prescribed manner registration of the surrenders will be deemed to have occurred at the time of lodgement, Kalahari said.
Kalaharis primary asset is its 40% owned Extract Resources (ASX, TSX: EXT), which in -turn owns and operates the Rossing South uranium deposit on the Husab project, Namibia. Where the resource currently stands at 292 Mlb (million pounds) graded 439 ppm U3O8 of which 267 Mlb at grade of 487 ppm on zones 1 and 2.
At Rossing South, the ongoing exploration work continues to return high grade intercepts. Most recently, on 11 January 2010 Extract reported exploration results which included high grade intercepts from infill drilling and encouraging results from a RadonX survey programme. Which the companies said confirmed the world class nature of the resource and its future production potential.
Results from the chemical assay included intersections of 113 m (metres) graded at 382 ppm (parts per million) of U3O8 (triuranium octoxide), 95 m at 665 ppm U3O8, 24 m at 2349 ppm U3O8, 50 m at 1,618 ppm U3O8, 91 m at 854 ppm U3O8, 65 m at 1,125 ppm U3O8, 38 m at 1,699 ppm U3O8, 75 m at 770 ppm U3O8, 23 m at 2,417 ppm U3O8, 3 m at 11,034 ppm U3O8 and 33 m at 1,487 ppm U3O8.
In January, Extract said it expects to add substantial resources to existing inventories within the next six months and beyond. The projects feasibility study is currently underway and Extract believes it has enough cash resources to fund a new exploration programme.
Kalahari also owns 44.9% of North River Resources (AIM: NRRP), which acquired Kalaharis copper and zinc interests through an asset swap deal in November. Also at the end of 2009, North River raised 7 million in an oversubscribed fundraising. The proceeds are being used to advance the newly acquired copper interests, including the Koperberg Project which currently hosts a JORC interred resource of 1.74 million tonnes grading 0.9% copper, and the RK and RK West Projects which host additional non-JORC resources of 0.55 million tonnes at 1.25% copper and 0.77 million tonnes at 0.9% copper respectively.
North Rivers other principle asset is the Namib Lead-Zinc Project which operated from almost 30 years until the mine was shut down in 1992. North River and Kalahari are looking to define an initial resource of 1 million tonnes below the existing mined areas. Previous non-JORC mine studies at the Namib Lead-Zinc Project indicated surface tailings and in-situ underground reserves of 1.65 million tonnes at 5.7% zinc, 1.6% lead, 40.2 grams per tonne silver.
EXT Price at posting:
$7.15 Sentiment: LT Buy Disclosure: Held
