Solitario completes US$4.5 million financing, shares rise
Solitario Resources Corp. [SLR-TSX, XPL-NYSE American] shares rallied Friday after the company said it has completed a US$4.5 million private placement financing. The company also said it has commenced drilling at its Golden Crest project in South Dakota. The company said current plans call for up to 8,000 metres of drilling in the Golden Crest and Ponderosa areas of the project for 2025. Drilling will test new surface gold anomalies and follow up on previous mineralized areas from last year’s drilling campaign.
The company said this year’s drilling program will occur in two phases and include offset drilling of mineralization discovered in 2024 and drilling of untested targets.
The company said it has entered into non brokered agreements with two investors for the purchase and sale of 7.14 million shares of the company, priced at US$0.63 per share. One of the investors is Newmont Overseas Exploration Ltd, a unit of Newmont Corp. [NGT-TSX, NEM-NYSE, ASX, PNGX], which is an existing shareholder of Solitario. The Second investor is Wexford Capital Partners.
Solitario shares advanced on the news, rising 6.9% or $0.06 to 92 cents. The shares trade in a 52-week range of $1.30 and 72 cents.
Solitario is focused on high-quality Tier-1 gold and zinc exploration projects. In addition to its South Dakota property holdings, Solitario holds a 50% joint venture interest with Teck Resources Ltd. (TECK.B-TSX, TECK.A-TSX, TECK-NYSE) (50%) in the high-grade Lik zinc deposit in Alaska, and a 39% joint venture interest with Nexa Resources (61%) in the high-grade Florida Canyon zincproject in Peru. At Forida Canyon, Solitario is carried to production via its joint venture arrangement with Nexa.
“We are pleased with the initiation of drilling at Golden Crest and the potential to build on the exploration success we have previously reported at our Golden Crest project,” said Solitaro President and CEO Chris Herald. “We look forward to reporting the results of this year’s campaign in the coming months.”
Solitario has begun drilling after reporting favourable metallurgical gold recovery and test results from Golden Crest. The company said bottle roll metallurgical testing was conducted on 20 mineralized intervals from 2024 drilling. Average gold recoveries were approximately 69% from nine samples from hole GC-003 and 66% for nine samples from GC-008.
“The gold we intersected in the upper limestone rocks and the deeper lower Deadwood formation is very amenable to standard industry extraction methods,” said Herald. “We can confidently move forward with our 2025 drilling program knowing that the mineralization we have identified to date appears to be metallurgically similar to the nearby Wharf-Homestake gold-district.”
In a press release on February 18, 2025, Solitario said the 2024 drilling program at Golden Crest was a resounding success. It said drilling results support the notion that Solitario’s 36,500-acre land position may be a mirror image of the prolific Homestake – Wharf gold system.