Most important takeaways from last week's events....
Passport is now comfortably funded through the release of its PEA and concurrent updated NI 43-101 report.
There's a good chance that no further equity raises will be required before 2014 because strategic investor(s) and/or an off-take agreement is expected to come in at the project level.
Important new investor(s) are thought to have participated in this latest raise.
Compared to MANY equity raises in the junior miner space, this one was actually quite strong. The closest comp transaction is obviously Prospect Global's, (PGRX) 15 million shares at $1.75 when the goal was 30 million shares at $3.33, which was where the stock traded two weeks prior.
I follow other sectors closely, coal, iron ore, gold....I can assure you that the financings getting done in those sectors are worse than what Passport managed to achieve.
First, Passport issued 1/2 warrants, (50% warrant coverage) struck at $0.25, a ~40% uplift to the $0.18 unit price! Most deals with warrants these days are 1 to 1, (100% warrant coverage) and struck at the unit price, not above.
Second, Passport's stock has outperformed the overall stock market, especially other natural resource stocks in November. For example, a group of nine coal stocks I follow is down on average 22% in November, and none of them have issued secondary shares this month! PPRTF.PK was at $0.21 on Nov 1st, traded between $0.18 and $0.23 and closed on Friday at $0.20, down just 5%. Think about that, pretty amazing if you ask me.
Third, the key financial backers of the company supported the deal yet again, the same backers who have been buying shares of PPRTF in the open market all year.
Passport took an important step forward last week, a fact that might have been lost on investors given the negative market tape and many distractions (Isreal, Europe, fiscal cliff). Management, the Board and top shareholders should be very pleased.
