Horizon Minerals pockets $1.3m cash from divestments

ASX-listed Horizon Minerals has banked a cool $1.3 million in cash by divesting its interest in explorer Kingwest Resources via an off-market sale process.

The company now plans to inject the funds, topped up with its existing cash reserves into a host of new year exploration programs which are tipped to kick off over the next few months. The looming campaigns follow a host of extensional drilling across its core assets including the Cannon – Golden Ridge mining hub and Penny’s Find gold projects in WA.

A slice of the activity has also been earmarked for regional probes within Horizon’s 1,100 square kilometre ground position in the Western Australian goldfields.

Horizon believes the sale of over 37 million Kingwest shares is aligned to its strategy of monetising its non-core inventory and using the cash to fuel resource growth and discovery at its preferred projects. The company held the Kingwest stocks as part of its divestment of the Menzies gold project in 2019.

In March 2021, Horizon finalised the divestment of its Menzies and Goongarrie gold projects to Kingwest for a total consideration of $8m – $3.375m in cash and the balance in Kingwest shares.  Horizon’s shares in Kingwest amounted to just over 15 per cent of the gold-focused company at the time.

The explorer has proven itself to be an agile mover in the market netting about $2 million in cash by divesting its shareholdings in Red Dirt Metals, Cyprium Metals along with its non-escrowed slice of ASX-listed Metal Hawk in March last year.

Horizon also generated about $1.35 million in cash around the same time through toll milling campaigns which utilised stockpiled ore from its Boorara deposit.

The Perth-based company is also continuing its development drive, tabling a trio of mineral resource updates across its Goldfields-based projects in September last year. The activity boosted its gold inventory by 91,000 ounces to a total of 1.24 million ounces.

With a chain of compelling resources in its crosshairs and a small army of hungry drill rigs dialled in for discovery, 2023 appears to be shaping up as a potentially electrifying one for Horizon Minerals.

The price of gold is also seemingly in its favour with the commodity currently trading at around US$1900 an ounce after a topsy-turvy 2022 that saw the price float between a march high of US$2050 an ounce to a low of US$1320 an ounce in September.

Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au