Stavely breaks IPO drought

Copper and gold explorer Stavely Minerals debuted on the ASX today in what was the first float by a Western Australia-based minerals play in more than a year.

Stavely shares closed trade at 21 cents each, up 5 per cent from the 20 cent offer price.

The shares had traded as high as 22 cents during the day, during which about 44,000 shares changed hands.

Stavely raised $6.1 million in the initial public offering after issuing 30.5 million new shares, representing about 40 per cent of the company.

Directors Chris Cairns, Peter Ironside and Jennifer Murphy hold the balance, or about 60 per cent of the issued capital, valuing the company at $16 million.

The IPO is the first by a WA-based minerals exploration play since Zeta Resources floated on May 1 last year, raising $25 million, according to BNIQ.

Mr Cairns and Mr Ironside were formerly part of the management team at Integra Mining, which was bought by Silver Lake Resources in 2012.

Stavely has outlined plans to start a 3,800 metre diamond drill campaign at its Stavely copper-gold project in Victoria later this month, followed by 4,800m of reverse circulation drilling at the Mt Ararat copper-gold project in early June.

Managing director Chris Cairns said the company was delighted with the level of support received from investors including former Integra Mining shareholders.

He partly attributed the success of the IPO to the company’s readiness to start drilling immediately.

“This stands in contrast to explorers which first have to undertake preliminary exploration to define drill targets. We have already done a lot of the hard work with our own money, so we can hit the ground running,” Mr Cairns said.

Morgans Corporate acted as technical lead manager for the transaction.