Metallic Minerals nets $6.3M investment from Newcrest for La Plata

Australia’s Newcrest Mining (TSX: NCM; ASX: NCM) has invested $6.3 million in Metallic Minerals (TSXV: MMG) for a 9.5% equity stake in the company. The proceeds will help advance Metallic Minerals’ La Plata copper-silver-gold-PGE (platinum group elements) project in Colorado.

Newcrest, which is one of the world’s largest gold miners and recently agreed to a merger with Newmont Mining (TSX: NGT; NYSE: NEM), announced last week that it would purchase 15.8 million units of Metallic via a non-brokered private placement. Each unit is priced at 40¢, comprising one Metallic common share and three-quarters of a share purchase warrant.

The per-unit price represents a 13% premium to the 20-day volume weighted average price of Metallic’s shares on the TSX Venture Exchange on May 9, the last trading session before the announcement.

The warrants have an exercise price of 55¢ per share, which, if exercised in full, would provide around $6.5 million in additional funding to Metallic and take Newcrest’s equity interest up to 15.5%.

“We are pleased to welcome Newcrest as a cornerstone shareholder and look forward to collaborating with their technical team to advance the La Plata project. Preparations are underway for a first phase resource expansion drill campaign targeted to start in June focused on extending the high-grade copper and precious metals mineralization announced in February of this year,” Metallic Minerals CEO Greg Johnson stated.

La Plata represents a alkalic porphyry deposit located at the southwest end of the Colorado mineral belt. An inaugural NI 43-101 mineral resource estimate (2022) identified a significant copper-silver resource (inferred) within the central Allard deposit, containing 889 million lb. of copper and 15 million oz. of silver.

Results from the 2022 expansion drilling intercepted the longest and highest-grade interval ever encountered at La Plata, as well as one of the top intersections for any North American copper project in the past several years. An updated resource estimate incorporating these results is expected in the second quarter of 2023.

Elsewhere, Metallic is also exploring for silver and gold in the Keno Hill and Klondike districts of the Yukon. It has consolidated the second-largest land position in the Keno Hill silver district directly adjacent to Hecla Mining (NYSE: HL), the largest primary silver producer in the U.S.

In September 2022, Hecla offered to buy Alexco Resources and its Keno Hill operations. The companies signed a definitive agreement in April and Hecla is eyeing production there by this year’s third quarter. Metallic, meanwhile, is anticipating the announcement of its first mineral resource estimate at Keno Silver during the second half of 2023.

Metallic is also one of the largest holders of alluvial gold claims in the Yukon and is building a production royalty business by partnering with experienced mining operators, including Parker Schnabel of Little Flake Mining from the hit television show Gold Rush, on the Discovery Channel.