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Great Northern Minerals (ASX:GNM) to raise fresh capital, halts shares

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ASX:GNM      MCAP $1.701M
18 March 2021 15:00 (AEST)
Great Northern Minerals (ASX:GNM) - Managing Director & CEO, Cameron McLean

Source: Great Northern Minerals

Great Northern Minerals (GNM) has called a trading halt until after the weekend as it gets ready to tap investors for some fresh capital.

While the junior gold explorer announced the capital raise today, it has not yet revealed how much it plans to raise or for what it plans to use the fresh influx of cash.

As it stands, shares will stay in a trading halt until Monday, March 22, unless Great Northern releases the details of the capital raise before then.

Great Northern owns three gold mines in Northern Queensland — the Carmel Creek, Golden Cup and Big Rush projects — just over 200 kilometres north of Townsville.

According to the company, each project contains very high-grade gold mineralisation and the mines have previously produced over 150,000 ounces of the precious yellow metal at an average grade of 1.91 grams per tonne of gold.

Nevertheless, the upcoming capital raise is likely no surprise to investors given Great Northern’s latest financial reports.

GNM had just under $1 million of available funds in the bank at the end of December 2020 after posting a cashflow-negative result of around $2.2 million over the first half of the 2021 financial year.

Around $1.1 million of this was spent during the December quarter of 2020, primarily on exploration.

While it’s certainly not unusual for mining companies to have a higher rate of cash burn over the exploration phase of their project development, the funds available to Great Northern at the end of December meant the company had less than one financial quarter of funding left to keep operations up and running.

As such, the company flagged in late-January its plans to potentially raise capital and exercise options to keep its balance sheet healthy.

Still, whether today’s capital raise is a simply balance-sheet booster or if something bigger is in the works for Great Northern has not yet been revealed.

Shares in GNM last traded for one cent each on Wednesday, March 17. The company has a $9 million market cap.

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