Petaquilla Minerals Ltd. (OTCBB: PTQMF) (TSX:PTQ) (FRANKFURT:P7Z) recently announced that its subsidiary, Petaquilla Copper Limited, has closed the fourth tranche of its non-brokered private placement, issuing more than 10 million units at $2.00 per unit and raising proceeds of $21 million.According to the company’s latest press release, the official closing date of the fourth tranche was June 1, 2007. In the meantime, all securities issued under the private placement are subject to a four month resale restriction until October 2 of this year. Petaquilla Copper reportedly paid a cash commission and advisory fee of 5 percent, equal to $1,056,320, in addition to issuing 512,635 advisory warrants and 15,525 broker warrants, each of which will be exercisable into a common share price of $3.50 per share for five years.
“The closing of the 4th tranche of PTC’s financing is significant for PTQMF as our large investment is expected to be further solidified and acknowledged by the market in general,” Tom Byrnes, Petaquilla Minerals CEO, said in an interview with MN1.com. “As [Petaquilla Copper] has raised over $60 million CDN, this investment is worth in excess of $44 Million CDN at the present time.”
This isn’t all that the company has planned, however. Byrnes already has next year outlined, and his plans certainly sound ambitious.
“In the next year, we will realize our commercial production and results from the large-scale drill program of 40,000 meters,” Byrnes said. “We will also expand the plant that is currently being built. We will start with 2,200 tonnes per day and look to expand to 5,000 tonnes per day in the near future. More importantly, these projects are expected to be financed with cash flow from gold production and not from further financings which is of great benefit to our shareholders as it means the shares would not be further diluted.
“We also expect Petaquilla Copper to progress rapidly giving yet greater value to our large investment of 22.189 million shares,” Byrnes continued. “So people can see progress and growth from four fronts: production, exploration, expansion and investment.”
In response to news about the tranche, Petaquilla stocks edged up slightly 45 percent – just under a penny – to stay steady at $2.11 a share.
For more information on Petaquilla’s future plans, listen to our Saul Albom on our live IPTV broadcast today at 11:30 a.m.
