BHP will acquire 77 million shares at 22.15p a share, a 13% premium to the Friday closing price of 19.58p. Shares in SolGold opened strongly today, up more than 13% at 22.2p
The investment takes BHP's holding in SolGold to 282.7 million shares, and it will obtain 19.25 million options exercisable at 37p for five years as part of the investment.
BHP may also provide secondees for the technical effort for the completion a feasibility study the Cascabel copper-gold project in Northern Ecuador and regional exploration effort.
"The agreement endorses [our] view of SolGold's commanding Ecuadorean copper and gold exploration footprint, and in particular the robust Alpala deposit," said CEO Nick Mather.
SolGold released a preliminary economic assessment on the Alpala project in May and recently updated it to include wider metal price capex and opex ranges. The company is working on a prefeasibility study on Alpala for completion by end of the first quarter of 2020.
