Orbital Corp puts equity deal to investors

What a difference a few days can make. Just 10 days ago, everyone was watching ASX-listed Hunter Valley coal play Australian Pacific Coal for Nathan Tinkler’s comeback after he made a 30¢ a share takeover bid with a handful of backers. Fast forward to this morning and last week’s interloper, Matt Latimore’s M Resources, seems to have stitched a deal with the board.

Stockbroker Evolution Capital had its hands on nearly 40 million Terracom shares on Monday morning and was seeking buyers at 80¢ a share. The stock, worth about 5 percent of the coal miner, was being sold to institutional investors on behalf of OCP Asia. The trade’s expected to cross prior to the market open. The block had been subject to pitching from a handful of brokers in the past fortnight. The deal was at a 1.5¢ discount from the last close.

Listed ammonia and phosphate explorer Minbos Resources was asking investors to chip in for a $20 million share placement, telling them it had already cornerstoned$15 million. The two-tranche placement, of which $14.45 million was under the company’s existing placement capacity, was priced at 11¢ a share, an 18 per cent discount to the last close. It had room for $5 million in oversubscriptions, according to the term sheet. Potential investors were told Minbos had locked in $15 million of cornerstone commitments. Of this, the term sheet said, $10.5 million was from an entity controlled by the chairman of Shanghai Putailai New Energy, the world’s largest battery anode producer.

Listed explorer TerraCom Resources said goodbye to an ex-substantial shareholder in an after-market trade on Thursday. A line of 29.1 million TerraCom shares changed hands at 61¢ a share, the same as Thursday’s closing price. That’s 4 percent of TerraCom’s register or about $17.8 million. Fund manager sources said Evolution Capital handled the trade. Fingers were pointing to Asian investor OCP Group as the seller, given the 29.1 million block of shares matched almost exactly with OCP’s leftover holding in Terracom.

Listed helium explorer Grand Gulf Energy was asking investors for $8 million Thursday morning to spend on its exploration wells in Utah and for working capital. The offer was priced at 4.4¢ a share, a 10.2 percent discount from the last traded price. It included a one-for-three attaching option with an 8¢ strike price and three-year expiry.

ASX listed lithium hopeful Arizona Lithium is asking investors for $23.2 million to help progress its Big Sandy project in the United States. Stockbrokers Evolution Capital and PACPartners launched the equity deal on Wednesday morning, seeking buyers at 12.5¢ a share. The deal was at a 16.7 percent discount from the last close. Shares sold had an attached option, on a one-for-two basis, exercisable at 18¢ in the coming two years.

There’s movement on the share register at TerraCom Resources, which has been facing coal result tampering allegations. A line of 64 million shares changed hands in an after-market crossing on Friday, worth some $24 million. The trade was done at 38¢ a share and Evolution Capital is understood to have been the broker.

Term sheets were flying on Tuesday morning as a handful of resources juniors tried to make the most of favorable equity market conditions. Lithium explorer Xantippe Resources, gold play Ora Banda Mining, and Cobar-focused Manuka Resources each had term sheets in the market, seeking fresh funds from equity investors.