Evolution Mining (ASX:EVN) has completed the $603 million acquisition of an 80% interest in the Northparkes Copper-Gold Mine in New South Wales from CMOC Group (SHA:603993).
Evolution, which has a market capitalisation of $7.32 billion, funded the acquisition with the help of a recently completed $525 million institutional placement and a new $200 million 5-year term debt facility.
As previously announced on 5 December 2023, Sumitomo Metal Mining and Sumitomo Corporation will retain their 20% interest in the Northparkes Joint Venture (JV).
Under the transaction structure, Evolution will also acquire all the shares in CMOC’s Australian subsidiary, CMOC Mining, which will not trigger any pre-emptive rights.
Evolution says this operation is expected to deliver immediate cash flows to the company to support balance sheet deleveraging.
Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Lawrie Conway says the acquisition marks ‘another important step’ in the company’s strategy of building a portfolio of long-life, high-margin assets and delivers Evolution 2 long-life assets in New South Wales.
In tandem to this acquisition, Evolution has also announced a non-underwritten share purchase plan (SPP) to raise up to $60 million, which is expected to close 16 January 2024 at 5:00pm AEDT.
Northparkes is a well-established copper-gold mine that sits 27km northwest of Parkes in the central west of New South Wales. The mine hosts multiple ‘large-scale’ porphyry copper and gold deposits suitable for bulk cave mining in an area well known to Evolution and benefits from ‘significant’ investment to date.
Evolution Mining is an ASX-listed gold-focused mining company that operates 5 wholly-owned mines in New South Wales.
Write to Aaliyah Rogan at Mining.com.au
Images: Evolution Mining
