LONDON (Alliance News) - Independent Resources PLC Thursday said it will need to raise cash after revealing it only has GBP60,000 in the bank as it tries to bring down costs in Egypt while searching for a partner to help with its project in Tunisia.
The company, which has a well-spread collection of assets based in Tunisia, Italy and Egypt, reported a pretax loss of GBP1.8 million in 2015 compared to the GBP1.6 million loss the year before following a small rise in costs and a fall in finance income.
Notably, the company's cash is burning at an alarming rate. At the end of the year, the business had GBP100,000 in the bank, raising GBP1.5 million during the year, and since the end of the year it has raised GBP300,000, but the balance on Wednesday only stood at GBP60,000, the company said.
"The group will still need to attract additional funding in forthcoming months to continue in operation and to fund acquisitions of new licence interests," said the company. "Since year-end we have taken extensive steps to reduce our creditor balances and reduce our ongoing cash burn rates."
Operationally, the company is focused on advancing assets in Egypt, where it acquired a 25% stake in the East Ghazalat in 2015, and is continuing to search for a farm-in partner for the licence interest in Ksar Hadada in Tunisia.
In Egypt, Independent is currently trying to bring the cost base down but that is having to be negotiated with the operator, a Chinese state-owned company named North Petroleum International Company SA.
"We continue to work to resolve these differences while protecting the interests of our shareholders," said the company.
Whilst it searches for a partner in Tunisia, Independent said it had carried out significant additional technical analysis of the prospectivity of the licence during the year and since year-end the company obtained an additional one-year extension until August 2017 from the Tunisian government to complete the work programme.
Assets in Italy are not being progressed, and the focus is on reducing costs at the operations.
Independent Resources shares were up 6.2% to 0.0690 pence per share on Thursday morning.
By Joshua Warner; joshuawarner@alliancenews.com; @JoshAlliance
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