Thursday, July 29, 2010

Mining PRs and the Ottotrans™, Part 21


Today we check in on Baja Mining (BAJ.to) and its news release this morning that saw the stock pop 12%.

This is what they wrote:

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwire - 07/29/10) - Baja Mining Corp. (TSX:BAJNews)(Pinksheets:BAJFF - News)(PINK SHEETS:BAJFF - News) ("Baja") today announced that its 70% owned project company, Minera y Metalurgica del Boleo S.A. de C.V. ("MMB"), has received all necessary credit approvals from the Export-Import Bank of the United States ("Exim Bank") and Korea Development Bank ("KDB") to provide US$573 million in senior and subordinated project financing for the construction of the Boleo Project in Mexico. -

Baja continues to work on obtaining credit approvals from Export Development Canada ("EDC") (also serving as technical agent for the facilities) and a group of commercial banks for, respectively, the remaining US$150 million and US$100 million of loans, consisting of senior project and cost overrun debt facilities. When combined with the Exim Bank and KDB elements of the facilities, this total of US$823 million will be the entire amount of required debt financing for Boleo. Further details concerning approvals for the commercial bank tranche of the financing are anticipated in the near term.


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PROJECT FINANCING (US$ m)
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EXIM Bank 419
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EDC 150
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KDB 90
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Commercial Banks 100
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Total 759
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SUBORDINATED DEBT (US$ m)
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KDB 64
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TOTAL 823
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"The credit approval of these two key elements of the project debt facilities is truly an historic event in the development of the Boleo Project," says John Greenslade, President and CEO of Baja. "It is a testament to the confidence of those financial institutions in the Company, its management team and the Boleo Project, as well as in Mexico. This key milestone facilitates the development of the Boleo Project. We are pleased to have such a supportive and committed lending group."

Drawdown of the project financing will be subject to the receipt of EDC and commercial bank credit approvals, as well as a number of standard conditions precedent, including completion of satisfactory legal documentation, implementation of a hedging program and expenditure by Baja and its Korean partners of their required equity contributions. Under the facility documents, MMB will be required to enter into offtake agreements for at least 70% of copper and cobalt production for the first 10 years of production and to hedge 50% of copper production for the initial 3 years of production.

MMB is being advised by Endeavour Financial International Corporation, and is progressing documentation with the lending group with the aim of closing the transactions and recommencing construction at Boleo as soon as possible.


And this is what it means:
Well, we seem to have nailed down the largest part of the debt financing deal, but we don't have the money yet because they won't give it over until the other guys agree to fund their parts of the deal. So we don't have the financing yet but it's close, pretty promise. Just like it was 'close' in 2008, in fact.

Oh, we're not going to tell you just how much we've committed to the debt lenders either, because the deal might turn out to be really shitty for you retail guys and leave nothing on the table for equity holders. There's a few bits about "offtake" and "hedge" but no details or numbers or prices, so don't worry about that. We don't want to put you off buying right now, do we?