Stevie,
I called AMC on Friday as well, and received roughly the same info. Kevin told me that the $250,000 non-brokered placement was ready to close. The $1M brokered placement is about 3/4 full, and Canaccord expects to close it soon (at least by the beginning of January).
The next phase of drilling, consisting of 8-10 holes, is expected to cost about $U300,000. They expect to target about $700,000 of the $1.25M on La Manchuria, which would leave about $500,000 to pay current liabilities, etc. (BTW, the last financials listed current liabilities at $618,541!)
They expect to be in Argentina the first or second week of January, and to have the money by then. They expect to start drilling by the third week of January.
They just finished meetings with Phelps Dodge about the Ferragudo property in Portugal. Phelps must spend $7M over a 6 year period to earn a 70% interest in this property. Abacus will travel to the property shortly to help plan the ground work. They expect some geophysics work and about 2000m of drilling.
Some other things mentioned:
1) Barrick owns 5% and Teck owns 15%. It's possible they may want to retain their percentage ownership if the properties develop, so they may be a source of future investment.
2) Kevin wasn't sure, but some options or warrants may have been repriced. There were 1.75M share purchase warrants scheduled to expire on Aug 29/98 at $1.20; 0.25M director and employee options to expire on Nov 1/98 at $0.42; and 1M share purchase warrants are scheduled to expire on Dec 31/98 at $4.00. Kevin thought the 1M warrants were held by Barrick from the Niblack property
3) The joint ventures with Red Star and Snowfield were made to get exploration started on those properties. If they hadn't spent the prescribed amounts, they may have been forced to return the properties to the guys they originally optioned them from.
That's all for now.
Neil. |
