Botswana Diamonds sinks after discounted fundraising

31st Mar 2015 14:35

Shares in AIM tiddler Botswana Diamonds dipped sharply after it raised £282,500 in a strongly discounted institutional placing.Botswana raised the money at a placing price of 1p per share, a 28% discount to the share's closing price on Monday. The shares were trading above 2p until November.Led by AIM wheeler-dealer John Teeling, Botswana wants the funds to continue its exploration projects in Botswana as well as for its working capital requirements.Recent interim results showed the company had £154,000 cash at the end of 2014 and said that its joint programme with Russian diamond giant Alrosa was "fully funded to Q3", which concluded at the end of March.Last week the Botswana government awarded a new licence to Atlas Minerals, the local exploration joint venture.The licence is located 316km north of the PL 207 licence, where the companies have already found heavy concentrations of kimberlitic indicator minerals (KIMs) in the north of the block.The suggestion is that it is possible that the source of the KIMs may be on the newly issued license.At the time Teeling said this was a "small but important step".