TTM’s major shareholder raises ~A$227M to pursue “mergers and acquisitions”.

Our copper-gold Investment Titan Minerals (ASX: TTM) has now been in an exclusivity period with Lingbao Gold for 52 days for its 3.1M ounce gold, 22M ounce silver project in Ecuador.

The exclusivity is with TTM’s 9.9% shareholder Lingbao Gold and was for 90 days (which means it runs until ~Jan 15th next year).

At a very high level exclusivity means Lingbao has sole negotiation rights with TTM to do a deal on its project in Ecuador without a competing bid.

We covered the exclusivity deal in full: TTM’s 3.1Moz gold 22Moz silver project: Chinese strategic investment of US $10M and 90 day exclusivity to get a deal done.

So now TTM have around another 38 days left to get a deal done…

Yesterday morning, we noticed the following in one of the newsletters we read pretty regularly - the Director’s Special from the guys at Money of Mine:

(Source)

A nice spot - pointing out the fact that Lingbao just raised HK$1.166BN (~A$227M ) via a zero coupon convertible bond (due in 2026).

The end result means Lingbao will have an additional ~A$227M to spend on (in their own words) “mergers and acquisitions opportunities for overseas high quality gold mining assets”.

The next sentence directly referenced the deal they did with TTM…

Lingbao have a market cap of ~A$4.27BN so they have plenty of capacity to do deals on projects around the world.

(Source)

We think now, Lingbao has the liquidity and capacity to finalise any deals they have been considering over the past few months (and possibly the exclusivity with TTM).

We mentioned previously that the Lingbao team were actually preparing to do a second follow up visit to TTM’s project - check out that Quick Take here.

That previous TTM announcement also mentioned that the focus of the visit from Lingbao would be on looking at infrastructure and other mines that are operating in the area.

So it would be fair to say that with their due diligence still ongoing, it has now been amped up another couple of steps.

What’s next for TTM?

Update on potential transaction with Lingbao 🔄

TTM recently signed a deal with Chinese company Lingbao Gold, which gave them a 90 day exclusivity to do a deal on the Dynasty project. This also came with a US$10M strategic placement in TTM.

We are now over halfway through this period (expected to end around January 15), so could expect to hear an update on this soon.

There is potential that given Lingbao entered into an exclusivity agreement, that there may be other parties sniffing around which could make things interesting.

More drilling at Dynasty gold project 🔄

TTM is currently at Dynasty with a view of upgrading the project's resource estimate. .

We expect the company to complete this drilling over the coming months and set itself up for a resource upgrade in Q1 next year.

More drilling at the Linderos Copper project (Gina JV) 🔄

The JV with Gina recently completed the second stage of the earn-in agreement AND kicked off exploration under the third phase of the deal:

We are looking forward to results from this stage of works:

(Source)