Equity raising not on Bellevue Gold agenda

Bellevue Gold promotes itself as the highest grade gold miner play on the ASX.

Bellevue Gold has denied it could be about to tap the market again or is keen on acquisitions.

But despite this, it continued to be one of the hot topics of conversations at the Diggers and Dealers conference in Kalgoorlie last week when it came to corporate activity or another equity raising.

The $1.8bn miner only raised about $70m in December and some thought that the company had one more raise on its agenda as it prepares to ramp up production by the end of this year.

But the company told DataRoom on Tuesday that it was not in any takeover talks and that raising equity was not part of its plans.

Still, that’s not to stop one of Australia’s larger gold miners swooping on Bellevue Gold once it firms up its production at The Bellevue Gold project.

The project is due to come on stream this year, with a probable mineral reserve of 1.34 million ounces of gold and located 40km north of Leinster in the Northern Goldfields region of Western Australia.

Bellevue Gold has $65m of debt and expects to deliver $354m of annual earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation in the 2025 financial year.

Some suggestions are Gold Road Resources or Gold Fields could be potential buyers of Bellevue Gold, as further consolidation is anticipated among gold miners with market values between $500m and $2bn.

There is understood to be about 400 Australian gold companies on the Australian Securities Exchange and most expect consolidation in the space to be inevitable.

The company has promoted itself as being the highest grade gold miner play on the ASX and some think its share price is trading on promising expectations which need to be delivered on.

The challenge for the group is to keep its project on time and to produce the anticipated revenue without extra working capital if it is to refrain from going cap in hand to investors for additional funds.

Last week, at the Diggers and Dealers conference in Kalgoorlie, the group was a talking point and some expect it could be the centre of some sort of activity sooner rather than later, but exactly what that may be is less certain.