Vancouver – With $144 million from a recent financing essentially doubling its cash coffers FNX Mining (FNX-T, FNXMF-O) has a nice problem: Figuring out what to do with about a quarter billion dollars.
About half the money, according to FNX Mining’s vice president of investor relations David Constable, appears to be destined for pre-existing capital requirements and general working capital.
FNX is developing the high-grade Levack footwall deposit (LFD) of its Levack mine in the northwest portion of the Sudbury basin where the company has pegged an indicated resource on a small portion of the LFD at 683,000 tonnes grading 8.09% copper, 1.26% nickel and 7.76 grams platinum, palladium and gold per tonne.
So far FNX has spent a couple hundred million dollars on the development. For the rest of 2009 Constable says FNX will spend a further $40 million and next year, $35 million more. Added to that general working capital and you get a tally of about what FNX already had in the bank before it raised $144 million.
That, by and large, liberates most of the funds from the $144 million financing for what FNX calls “future business opportunities” in an August press release, or what Constable calls “swagger money.”
He says that FNX has solid growth plans in the coming couple years, in particular with the LFD, but that the part of the company’s project pipeline that needs additions most is on the two to four year horizon.
“If we don’t have something in that part of the pipeline next year, you know, I’d be disappointed,” he says.
While there are few specifics on just who FNX might be eyeing, Constable explains that FNX is actively considering assets that fit the company’s profile: Underground, any commodity, in the Americas and robust economically.
Geographically Constable says FNX would first target the area it knows best, Sudbury, but will consider any high quality project especially if it is in the America’s – though he adds: “Not a giant open-pit mine in the Andes.”
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