* Lonmin to sell 27 billion new shares
* Rights issue priced at 1 pence a share
* Full-year pre-tax loss widens to $2.26 bln (Adds CEO and analysts comments, shares, results)
By Olivia Kumwenda-Mtambo
JOHANNESBURG, Nov 9 (Reuters) - Platinum producer Lonmin priced its $407 million rights issue at a 94percent discount as the firm fights for survival in the face ofdepressed commodity prices after writing down $1.8 billion inassets.
Battered by strikes, rising costs and weak platinum prices,Lonmin said last month it planned to raise the money and another$370 million in bank loans to refinance debt due in May 2016.
Lonmin has urged shareholders to approve the cash call at ameeting on Nov. 19, saying the injection was crucial to itssurvival.
Lonmin plans to sell 27 billion shares at 1.00 pence each toits shareholders in a 46 for 1 rights issue, compared with thestock's last trading price of 16.25 pence on the London StockExchange on Friday.
The company had signalled that the equity cash call would beissued at a "significant discount".
Its shares have tumbled 90 percent this year and were up 9percent to 17.75 pence as of 0920 GMT on Monday.
"The rights issue has been fully underwritten and we hopeshareholders vote positively. We firmly believe that the rightsissue is in the best interest of our shareholders," ChiefExecutive Ben Magara said in a statement.
The company has said that if shareholders did not approvethe rights issue, lenders would not provide the loans to pushback the maturity of the 2016 debt to 2020.
Lonmin said that South Africa's Public InvestmentCorporation (PIC), which owns about 7 percent stake of thecompany, had committed to take up its full entitlement and has"sub-underwritten a material portion of the proposed rightsissue in excess of its entitlement."
Investec analysts said investors had little choice but tosign up to the rights issue.
"Management is effectively forcing shareholders to followtheir rights or be diluted into obscurity," the analysts said ina note.
Lonmin had to rely on an $800 million rights issue to shoreup its battered balance sheet in November 2012.
ASSETS WRITE DOWN
Lonmin was hit harder than other producers by a platinummining strike in 2014, South Africa's longest and costliest, asunlike its peers, virtually all its operations are concentratedin the strike-affected Rustenburg area.
The miner announced a plan in July to close or mothballseveral mine shafts, putting 6,000 jobs at risk. It said onMonday around 3,100 people have since left the company.
The company said it had widened its full-year loss andbooked an impairment charge of $1.8 billion on its assets asmetal prices fall and it restructures its business.
Lonmin posted a full-year pre-tax loss of $2.26 billion froma loss of $326 million a year ago.
Spot platinum has recovered from seven-year lows ofless than $900 hit last month but it was still at levels lastseen in 2009 due to oversupply concerns and slowing demand intop consumer China.
Greenhill advised Lonmin on the rights issue, which wasunderwritten by HSBC, J.P. Morgan Cazenove and Standard Bank. (Reporting by Olivia Kumwenda-Mtambo; Editing by Mark Potterand Keith Weir)
