Stellar Diamonds Share News (STEL)

LONDON (Alliance News) - Stellar Diamonds PLC Friday said its pretax loss narrowed in the first half of the year as costs fell but said it needs to raise a further USD20 million to progress the Tongo project in 2015.

The West African diamond miner reported a pretax loss of USD934,928 for the six months ended December 31, narrower than the USD1.5 million reported a year earlier, as administrative expenses fell. The company does not currently generate any revenue.

The company is advancing two diamond projects into production with a focus on imminent trial mining at Baoulé to generate early cash flow.

"We are making great strides in advancing our key diamond projects which have multi-million carat potential towards production. Having created a defined path to trial mining with cash-flow being realised from diamond sales at Baoulé and with a compelling route to mine development which should achieve early cash flow identified at Tongo, this is an exciting time for Stellar," it said.

For 2015, the company said it "remains committed" to ensuring further cash flow from diamond exports and sales from Baoulé and said it will apply for a mining license for the Tongo project, which will include conducting an environmental impact assessment and the updating and combining of existing technical and mining reports in order to support the mine lease application.

"Naturally for this process further funding will be required with the objective of raising up to USD20 million in aggregate to fund both the mining licence application and the Tongo mine development. We will be considering the optimum ways of achieving this with the focus being on securing funding via non-dilutive project debt structures," said Stellar in a statement.

Stellar Diamond shares were down 0.1% to 0.899 pence per share on Friday morning.

By Joshua Warner; joshuawarner@alliancenews.com; @JoshAlliance

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